Family Ties
by meholstein
Summary: And sometimes the longest way around is the shortest way home. Chuck is God, but he's forgotten. He is alone. The Winchesters, Bobby and Castiel help him remember. Raphael, Crowley and the apocalypse that was hover on the horizon.
1. Chapter 1

" **And it turns out that the longest way around is the shortest way home."**

He didn't know how long it had been.

He'd watched his most cherished son fall into that hole, clenched his fist and sealed it up behind him. The world had moved on. He hadn't.

Afterwards, he'd left heaven almost immediately, went to 'walk the earth.' He wished he couldn't remember the way the angels stared as he shut the door. He couldn't look them in the eye. He couldn't stand the fact that he was abandoning them (you abandon a sister, you abandon a son, you abandon all your children), couldn't stand the way they all looked like Lucifer, eyes narrow with envy.

There was something honest about the physical realm, the dirt beneath his feet and the wind in his hair, that grounded him. He walked, endlessly, letting the ground beneath him convince him that it was worth all that they'd all been through. It was beautiful. He knew he created it, but he didn't feel that way, felt like it already existed, that he _had_ to give it life.

Adam and Eve had let Lucifer corrupt them, so he didn't see them while he walked the earth, but he watched their family grow. Soon enough, he and Lucifer and everything not on this Earth became myths and legends in their minds.

As people forgot, he revealed himself to prophets, sent them out to speak the truth and remind everyone. He didn't assume the role of dictator, didn't want them to feel pressured or commanded like the angels had. He knew that they had to make the choice themselves.

And it worked, for a while. But after a few generations, it began to backslide. So he popped in again, sent out some more prophets, and it got better for a little while. But humanity grew complacent, got _used_ to the prophets, and began to tune them out as senseless soothsayers.

Before long, humanity turned full-tilt into evil. They invited what few demons there were then into their _homes_ , traded their souls for power and favor, chose hate over love and chose money over meaning. When their lives plunged into despair, they turned to him and cursed him. Spat in his face, said it was his fault, like he's the one who made betraying your loved ones wrong.

 _He'd thrown his sister into a cage, thrown his son into another, and it was wrong._

He couldn't stand to watch them make the same mistakes he'd made. He'd tried to create creatures who would love, and he'd failed. He created the angels for power, and they chose terror, and he created the humans for love and they chose hate.

He thought he'd wipe the slate clean, set his sister and his son free, let them destroy everything he'd created and it would finally be over. She was right, in the end, and everything just tore itself down in the end anyways. They were better off when it was just the two of them.

It tore his heart to raise his hand and summon the water, but he told himself it would be over soon.

But Noah labored every day, went home to his daughter and kissed her on the head, told her everything would be okay. As he raised the seas, he saw her perched over a fire playing with her toys. Noah's daughter.

He couldn't stand to wipe out that little girl, with her twisted brown hair and eager eyes by the fire as Noah told her a story of a God who loved her. He couldn't picture her drowning in the waves, never even getting her chance.

So he warned Noah, let him build a boat, and for Noah he didn't set Lucifer or the Darkness free. Hope springs eternal.

This time, he tried something different. He wasn't going to reign through authority, through distance, through commands. He'd tried to warn them as their wise father of the consequences of hate, and they didn't listen. He created them with freedom, after all, and nothing free wants to bow.

So he gave them the word of a loving father, of a father who would accept them no matter what they did.

His heart changed, bloomed, letting them in in a way he'd never done before. They stopped being little creations, little tiny people, and each person became a beloved son and daughter that he could never turn away.

It felt like he was being shredded each time someone chose hell, but they kept choosing, no matter how careful he was to take care of everyone. His heart tore into pieces every time someone summoned a demon, but he never turned them away, because they were his children and he _loved_ them.

Eventually, the daily tragedy was too much. He had to do _something,_ this had to _stop_.

He did what he hadn't done in so long, showed them _who_ he was and _why_ he'd done everything he'd _ever_ done, told them the whole story, that he loved them _so_ much, a desperate plea for them to please stop choosing hate.

And for his love, they nailed him to a cross.

The pain was excruciating, but it wasn't the pain of nails through hands. It was the pain of knowing that, no matter what he did, he wouldn't be loved. Even _his own creation_ hated him.

He lifted his head to look through bloodied eyes at the crowd. They clamored for his death, pushing and shoving against one another.

My arrogance… I thought I could do something _good_.

He stood on the cliff, looking down at the town.

It was a south american civilization, in the act of selecting a young woman to sacrifice. She was so happy to be selected, grinning as they presented her to the town. Her life for the next year would be lavish and luxury, as a reward for being sacrificed, as if they knew they were doing the wrong thing even as they did it. It wasn't the first time he'd watched such proceedings.

It wasn't as if heaven was a bad place to be, but the point of life isn't to get to heaven, it's to make choices and learn from them, to have the experience. Heaven was merely a waiting place, for what he'd planned after it all was over.

But at this rate, there would be nothing after. There would be a hell full of souls who chose hate and a son and a sister who were right all along.

His sister was right. They were happy, and he had to go and tear it apart. He'd been so naive, to think he could just _create_ more love. All he'd done is destroy what good there was, creating a world which produced hate and scorn like a factory.

 _But you started it,_ his heart said _. You threw them in cages, you are the first betrayer._

He used to defend himself, to say _they betrayed me first_ , but he didn't bother anymore.

Soft summer breezes were set on fire by a thrashing roman empire, warm heartbeats torn open by sharp spears halfway across the world.

But it was too late. He couldn't destroy this world, not again, not after the guilt ripped through him after watching everyone choke on the saltwater from the ocean before Noah. They didn't want him but they didn't want to _die_ , they just wanted to live their own lives, tangled up together in the mess. He couldn't kill someone he loved again, no matter _what_ , and he couldn't take from people their chance at life (even if they'd take it from each other).

He'd destroyed enough good in the world, he couldn't bring himself to destroy the tiny moments of good they found amongst his mess (no thanks to him).

He didn't want to do this anymore.

The pain tore through his chest like ice, just like the cage he'd created to contain Lucifer. If he were any sort of decent being, he'd fling himself down there with him and die in the ice. But it wouldn't do any good to make himself suffer, because the damage would still be done. Better to just wipe himself away and forget about it.

He studied the town, tiny in the trees below this cliff, watched the people walking by.

He couldn't actually die, because then everything would blink out of existence in an instant. But he didn't have to _be_ god. He could tuck everything away, take his grace and lock it up in a box where no one could ever find it.

He put his hand on the chest of this vessel, feeling where his power met the body. He could _pull_ , and his power would come out, and it would be nothing to hide it away. They didn't want him, and this way, he could give them what they wanted.

He pulled, and it felt like he was emptying as the white light pulled from his hand. He felt dizzy, his power and memories no longer in his core but in the palm of his hand. He felt weak, like he was no longer in his own body.

Using the power he held in his hand, he made the body small, transforming it into a child. With the power he tucked it out of sight, in a pocket of the universe only he could find, and as he sealed the gap he tossed his memories in with it.

The little boy blinked his eyes, sitting up from where he laid. He looked around, confused, but not scared.

He saw the town at the bottom of the cliff, and felt hunger gnaw at his stomach, and figured he'd find food there.


	2. Chapter 2

It's another day, another motel room, and the Winchesters are bent over the motel table with their noses in papers. The apocalypse may have been averted, but Raphael is fighting his hardest to wind it back up again, with Castiel and his angels only barely beating him back. Bobby was hitting the books, and Dean and Sam were waiting for a lead.

Suddenly, Castiel appeared in the room, trenchcoat billowing.

"Something is wrong with the prophet," Castiel rumbled with no preamble."I have been searching for the prophet Chuck. A Prophet would be a great asset in the fight against Raphael. But he was not in his home, nor was he anywhere I looked on earth."

"So he's just not on earth, right?" Dean asked. "We figured he was dead."

"That's what I thought," Castiel said, cocking his head. "I went to heaven to search. But he's not there. Heaven had no place for him."

"So, he's not on earth and he's not in heaven," Dean said. "That only leaves one place. Can prophets even go there?"

Castiel looked gravely at him. "No, they cannot."

Dean and Sam looked at Castiel.

"Like I said, something is wrong."

Sam spoke up. "What are you saying? Is he not dead? Or maybe Raphael already got to him?"

Castiel sighed tiredly. "Heaven has a record for every human. They're either admitted or not. Those who go to hell are never recorded as admitted. But Charles Shurley has no record at all."

Sam nodded. "So Chuck doesn't exist, according to heaven."

"Is there a way someone could tamper with those records?" Dean asked. "Maybe Raphael is hiding him."

"No. I mean," Castiel sighed. "Not that I know of. Those records are not modified by any angels."

"Are there… are monsters on those records?" Dean asked, standing. "Like, are we sure he's human?"

"I hate that we have to ask that," Sam said from his position over his laptop.

"Abominations that were once human have a record, but things that were never human do not."

Dean leaned back. "So Chuck's not human. Great."

"Well, whatever he is, he's got a line to God. We can't let Raphael get to him," Sam said.

"That we cannot allow," Castiel said. "We don't know his power. It could be immense, and Raphael would turn that against us."

Dean looked at Castiel. "How was this missed? You're the one who told me he was a prophet."

Castiel looked at the wall. "His name is recorded as a prophet, yet he is not on the records of heaven. Perhaps his name was falsely recorded as a prophet."

"Can that even be done?" Sam asked.

"I do not know."

Dean huffed, frustrated. "We'll ask when we _find_ him, whatever he is."

Sam turned to Dean, shoulders set. "I know that he's not human, probably, but it's not like he's dropping bodies. We're not going to _do_ anything to him."

"He wrote me full frontal, I'm not feeling charitable."

"Castiel," Sam asked. "If he's not human, what do you think he is?"

Castiel turned, considering the peeling wallpaper of the motel room.

"Something always… bothered me, about Chuck. I have known many prophets, but his process was always unusual. Other prophets… they knew what they knew because God spoke to them bodily, or because they read the stone tablets. Sometimes God spoke through visions, but never so directly. God favored lacing his communication with metaphor and symbolism. It was often not even the Prophets themselves who wrote the texts, but close acolytes."

"So, what?" Dean asked.

Castiel frowned. "Chuck Shurley is not what he seems."

"I mean, we thought that right from the get go," Sam recalled, standing up from the motel table. "But you angels seemed satisfied with Prophet of the Lord,' and we had bigger problems."

"Okay, so we'll find Chuck then," Dean said, exasperated. "Did you pop in just to tell us this?"

"You always tell me to 'pop in' and 'say hi,'" Castiel said. "Here I am, doing so."

Something inside Dean loosened a little at the thought that Castiel finally learned how to pop in.

"Well, it doesn't hurt to ask around," Sam was saying. "Besides, we can always use someone like Chuck in our pockets, whatever his story is."

"Don't you think we've got a lot on our plates right now?"

"Honestly… not really, Dean," Sam argued. "I'm out of hell, and Raphael's kept the fight to heaven for now. We're hunting, sure, but the apocalypse made more hunters than ever before. Notice how we haven't had a whiff of a real case?" Sam gestured toward Dean. "Hell, aren't you getting calls from hunters that are bored out of their minds looking for work?"

Dean threw his arms out. "Fine, _fine_ , we'll let the new hunters do their thing."

"You boys are the _Winchesters_ ," Castiel added, tone a little hard. "You have much bigger concerns than semiannual ghost hauntings."

At that, he vanished.

"You ever think he'll learn to say when he's leaving?" Dean said, without purpose.

"No," Sam answered shortly. "He's right; if Chuck's missing from heaven, and Raphael, or Crowley, doesn't have him, we need to find him."

"Where would we even start?" Dean said.

Then, he groaned loudly, rubbing his face.

"Ugh, I hate magic."

It wasn't a day later that the brothers were spilling through Bobby's front door.

"Hey boys," Bobby said, but the words weren't out of his mouth before they shoved past him and went for the fridge.

"Don't mind me," Bobby snarked as they walked in. "I can't remember, why'd I let you two come over?"

"Because the apocalypse is over, but the world isn't safe yet," Dean said, already digging in the kitchen for food.

"There's lunchmeat in the drawer," Bobby offered lamely, sitting back down. "So, you need a spell."

Sam's mouth was already full of lunchmeat sandwich. "Yep. A spell to find anything, human or not."

"Because Chuck, the hentai-watching prophet, may not be human after all," Bobby said, repeating what he'd heard over the phone.

Dean nodded. "Yep."

Bobby groaned, sitting back down at the desk. "I'll get looking."

It didn't take them long to find a standard locating spell, and within 24 ingredients Castiel had brought the ingredients for Bobby to mash in a bowl.

Much like when they tried to find Lillith, they gathered around a map and a pendulum, as Bobby chanted latin over it.

The pendulum landed on Chuck's run-down ranch.

"You didn't check his house first?" Bobby asked, incredulous, turning to Castiel.

"I sensed no presence at the hovel," Castiel said, ever so slightly defensive.

Dean stepped in. "Honestly, it was far away and we doubted he'd be there if he was mixed up in all this crap. Besides, Castiel said he checked."

"I can take us there instantly," Castiel said, reaching for Sam and Dean.

"Hey!" Dean yelled. "No! We're driving."

Sam rolled his eyes. "Dean, that is going to take way too long -"

"Sam and I are taking angel air, Dean, come with us or get left out," Bobby said shortly as he stalked out of the room. "I'm grabbing the guns."

Dean looked on at Bobby leaving the room.

"He's never flown with Cas before," Sam said shortly. "Don't begrudge him this."

Dean thrust his hands up. "He's not missing anything! It just makes you nauseous."

"It is faster," Castiel said dryly. "I don't want to wait for you to arrive."

Bobby returned, shotgun on his left shoulder. "Lets go."

Castiel only put his hands on Sam and Dean, but the three of them disappeared in an instant.

They appeared in the living room, and were a little shocked to find Chuck again clad in his boxers and shitty bathrobe, passed out on the couch with a bottle of bourbon.

"Holy shit!" he yelled, sitting up. "Guys! What's going on?"

"Next time we fly to a house, stop outside the door," Dean said to Cas. Dean turned to the drunk prophet. "We were looking for you."

Considering Chuck's tired and drunk form, suspicion drained out of him. Whatever was going on, this somewhat pathetic man didn't know anything about it. Dean doubted he knew about anything in the world except late night porn and bourbon.

"Raphael is trying to restart the apocalypse, and you've got a direct line to God." Dean eased off. "We figured someone might come abducting you here soon."

"Well I'm not abducted," Chuck defended, tying his robe and standing up.

"You need to come with us," Sam pressed. "Raphael is trying to start the apocalypse again. You're not safe here."

"So now _you're_ abducting me," Chuck said dryly.

Sam furrowed his brows. "It's not like that. We're trying to get you to safety. There's no telling what Raphael will do to you."

"There's no telling that Raphael will even do anything to me at all!" Chuck exclaimed. "Ever since the not-apocalypse I've just been in this house! I only was able to keep the house because it was paid off -"

"Raphael has not come for you yet because he does not know you're alive," Castiel said shortly. "Prophets lose their powers upon death, so Raphael thinks he has no use for you."

Chuck's voice was whining. "Even if I had my 'powers,' what use would that be to him?"

Castiel turned his head threateningly towards the prophet. "Spellwork. _Blood_ magic. Are you aware of the great power the prophets of old wielded?"

Bobby sighed. "If we found you, the bad guys are gonna find you," Bobby explained, less harshly. "Just… come with us, boy."

Chuck swallowed, adams apple bobbing. "But I thought the apocalypse was over?"

"I guess not," Sam said, a touch of remorse in his tone. "It's never over for us."

Chuck frowned at them, and for a moment it looked like he would argue.

But in a moment, his gaze softened, and he looked around the ramshackle house as if it were the last time he would ever see it. His face was eased in a second, as if something else had taken him over.

Dean didn't miss the way Castiel narrowed his eyes at the behavior.

But in a moment Chuck was back to normal, scrambling up the stairs, yelling "Let me pack!"

Bobby rolled his eyes, setting the shotgun down.

"That was surprisingly easy," Dean hummed, looking around. "I expected more protest."

"His attitude will change," Sam assured. "Last time, the angels were protecting him, letting him live a normal life as long as he kept writing. He doesn't know how it is."

"He will soon," Bobby said dryly, looking around the destroyed house.

"Are we gonna do anything with him?" Dean asked, a little confused. "I mean, I get bringing him to Bobby's for now. Keep him away from Raphael. But is he actually gonna be useful?"

Castiel raised his eyebrows, listening to the banging upstairs as Chuck packed. "Probably not."

"We'll make him useful," Bobby assured, voice both comfort and threat.

Chuck ran downstairs, carrying a duffel bag. "I wanted to pack more stuff," he was saying, "But I know there's a lot of moving around and it's not like I'm never going to see this place again, right?" He looked up eagerly, hopefully.

The Winchesters gave him an uncertain look.

Chuck frowned, and looked away. "I know, I know, just…" he heaved a sigh. "Okay."

He solidified his stance, and for a quick moment the group was impressed with how quickly the prophet pulled it together.

"Lets go," Castiel said, sweeping them away.

They were deposited in Bobby's living room, disheveled but unharmed.

"So," Chuck said, after a moment's silence, "What now?"

Bobby shrugged. "See how you can make yourself useful. Still getting Winchester-vision?"

"Not since the not-apocalypse," Chuck said. "It's like when you two went off script, the whole thing fell apart."

"Maybe that's why Raphael hasn't come for him." Dean said. "Since we ruined Chuck's prophecies, he's not a prophet anymore?"

Castiel gave Chuck a beady eye. "It's best to be sure. Chuck Shurley stays with us."

Chuck laughed nervously. "I'd like that, too, if you think a pissed off archangel is going to come after me."

"Plus, a few tests never hurt anyone," Bobby said lightly.

"Your tests did," Dean said with a surly tone.

Chuck's eyebrows drew together, concerned. "Tests?

"Testing you for humanity!" Bobby said with fake excitement. "But don't worry, it's not like we'll shiv you if you're not human. Hell, Sam hasn't fully been human this whole time."

"Hey!"

"Sam's still sensitive," Dean said.

Sam rolled his eyes, saying nothing.

"Wait here," Bobby instructed, as he made to grab his testing box from the closet.

They all watched uncertainly as Bobby grabbed Chuck's arm and cut him with silver, made him drink salt water, made him hold iron, made him hold a cross. They didn't expect anything from the monster tests, really, just going through the motions.

Bobby started the more obscure tests, with herbs and spices and chants for psychic power. Chuck continued to test negative, and Bobby began to throw the boys furtive glances.

Eventually, Chuck noticed the way they were all looking at each other.

"What?" Chuck queried, confusion turning to annoyance. "What's going on?"

Dean assessed Chuck, and decided to stretch the truth. "Just normal testing Chuck, we've all been through it once or twice. I know it's annoying, but if you're secretly a shape shifting monster or something it'll save everyone's life."

Chuck rolled his eyes, and let Bobby keep poking and prodding him.

Halfway into the tests for spiritual power, which were mostly Bobby just waving crystals around like a lunatic, something strange began to emerge.

"Chuck, you're testing negative for psychic power," he said, shaking his head. "As a prophet, or vision-seeing person, or whatever, that just don't make sense."

Chuck groaned. "What are you saying?"

"Nothing, right now," Bobby said, humming. "Just that Cas is right; this ain't adding up."

"'Cas is right?'" Chuck asked, suspicious.

Dean sighed. "Cas said he's known a few prophets in his day, but that you weren't quite like any of them. That you were, uh, kind of weird."

Chuck looked a little startled. "I don't know anything, all right?" He dropped his hands. "Great. I thought being a prophet with angels constantly watching me was bad enough. But no, now they're trying to kill me and apparently I'm not even a prophet, I'm something weird and no one knows what."

Chuck's tone was turning a little hysterical, strung out from the turn his day had taken.

"Wind down, Chuck," Dean barked. "For all we know, you're just a different kind of prophet God special-ordered for the apocalypse that never came. We're keeping you here so that Raphael doesn't paint a Key of Solomon with your insides, not because we have a secret plot to kill you."

Chuck looked down at the floor, sighing tiredly. "All right, all right. So is that the plan? Just hold me here until Raphael's taken care of?"

"I hope not," Bobby grumbled. "I do not want some drunk hack writer wandering around my house."

Sam jumped in, tone understanding. "We'll probably move you somewhere safe after a little while. You'll stay there until this is all over."

Chuck looked up at them. "I know war doesn't have a schedule or anything, but how long do you think that will be."

Bobby was still walking around him with" crystals, stopping every so often to stare at one like it was faulty.

Dean shrugged, mock unconcerned. "Well probably two years or less. By then, either Raphael will be dead or we'll all be dead."

Chuck blanched.

Just then, Bobby stopped waving rocks and religious symbols around, clunking his crucifix on the desk and shaking his head.

"I gotta hand it to you, Chuck," Bobby said. "You are the most normal, non-magical, non-monster human I've ever met. Most people usually fail at least one or two tests, for _something_. Do you know anything you're not telling us?" He said, cocking an eye towards him.

"What do you mean?" Chuck asked, again, tiredly. He was beginning to feel like he was asking more questions than receiving answers.

"Just…" Sam guided, ever the understanding one. "Any weird feelings? Magic-ey inclinations? Weird happenings?"

"Besides visions from God?" Chuck scoffed. "Well, I have no parents. Born to a woman who died in childbirth, passed around the foster system growing up. Normal kid, for a foster kid, I guess," Chuck said, shrugging. "Didn't make a lot of friends, kind of felt like a weird loner. Grew up into an alcoholic writer. Never any…" he waved his hands for effect. _"Supernatural_ stuff going on."

"Moving schools will do that to you," Sam sympathized. "Got any foster records or anything?"

"Not really," Chuck said. "I mean, I do, but they don't say anything abnormal - anything abnormal for a kid in the foster system. Abuse runs rampant with foster parents," he said sadly.

"No weird 'he moved things without touching them,' or 'he said something weird to a teacher?'"

"Not that I know of," Chuck said, shrugging. "I'm telling you, I was just a normal loser until I started having weird visions." Chuck sighed. "I was even gonna kill myself, but…" He shrugged. "Something in me just told me I shouldn't."

"Thanks for that, I guess," Dean said dryly. "You could live on to write me full frontal."

Sam looked at Dean, full of offense. _You don't joke about suicide, Dean_.

Dean rolled his eyes in response.

"Lets have a look anyway," Bobby said. "Do you have any records?"

"Hell if I know," Chuck shared, shrugging. "I requested to look at them in high school, but never kept a copy. Meaninglessly morbid, you know?"

"Yeah," Sam said, shaking his head. Also a troubled teen, he managed to 'lose' all his records at Stanford.

"Well, give us some leads, then," Bobby dug, a little annoyed. "Graduating school, last foster parents, e.t.c."

Chuck rolled his eyes. "Do we have to? Is digging up my angsty childhood really going to help here? Also, I have a bad feeling about it."

"Follow these feelings a lot, do you?" Bobby pressed.

Chuck rolled his eyes, a little frustrated. "Yes, I do. And it's not because I'm some _magical monster._ Everyone has instincts!"

Dean raised his eyes at Bobby, shrugging. Bobby sighed, and said "yeah, all right. But if you ever think that these feelings aren't normal instincts, let us know."

"Well, there is…" Chuck said, and sighed. "Sometimes I get a bad feeling, and then I lose the next few hours of memory. Doctors always said it was just the alcohol, but I know what blacking out feels like and that isn't it."

"We're already keeping an eye on you here," Dean shared, "So if you forget the next few hours at any point, let us know. It's probably nothing."

Chuck nodded, eyes flaring with frustration. "So are we done? Can I eat now?"

"Yeah, go," Dean said, waving his hand, and Chuck practically threw himself out of the living room.

"There's lunchmeat in the drawer," Bobby said, watching Chuck dig unceremoniously through his fridge. "Sam, you're paying for the next round of groceries," he rumbled.


	3. Chapter 3

Chuck was upstairs, getting used to the bed Bobby had temporarily put in place for him, and the Winchesters were sitting in the living room talking shop.

"Okay, we've got the prophet in our pocket, what's next in the fight against Raphael?" Dean asked.

"Balthazaar and holy weaponry," Sam sounded less than happy, "Oh, and an actual plan."

"What are we supposed to do, kill Raphael?" Bobby said. "He isn't ever going to forgive us for imprisoning Michael, even if he does give up on the apocalypse."

Dean sighed. "Yeah, I think that's what we're supposed to do. Or imprison him too, I guess, because if we couldn't kill Lucifer we probably can't kill Raphael."

"We can't open the cage again, or Michael and Lucifer will come rushing out, and we can't kill an archangel," Sam said.

Everyone sat in the room, silently.

"Not that I'm giving up," Dean began, "But we are really SOL."

"Maybe we don't have to deal with Raphael directly," Sam said. "All the seals are broken, so the only way to restart the apocalypse is to open the cage with our key."

"Are we sure about that?" Bobby asked. "Because if Raphael can re-break the seals, that would be a problem."

They looked at Dean, and Dean looked to the sky.

"Oh Castiel, we pray to you to ask if the seals are permanently broken, or if they can be rebroken by Raphael," Dean said.

Castiel was there in an instant. "The seals are reforming, even as we speak. The last seal has re-formed on a powerful demon named Abbadon. As soon as the first seal reforms, it can be broken again."

Dean looked around. "Does it matter who the righteous man is?"

Castiel tilted his head. "It was supposed to be you, just as it was supposed to be Sam for the last, and then you two were supposed to be the vessels. But your brother Adam became a vessel, and the last seal re-formed, so I am no longer sure."

"We can't stop a contingent of angels from re-breaking the seals," Sam said despairingly.

Dean looked down. "Especially not with angels helping them."

Sam shook his head. "Lets cover all our bases here, make sure there's no way to stuff him in the cage too."

"We don't even know if that cage can hold two archangels, let alone three," Bobby said.

"There are weapons that can kill an archangel, and Balthazaar searches for them even now," Castiel said. "Not all hope is lost."

"You know who would know about the cage?" Sam asked.

Dean raised an eyebrow at Sam.

"Crowley."

One short summoning ritual later, Crowley, King of Hell was standing in the Singer household basement.

"What can I do ya for, fellas?" He said, all jovial tone and expensive whiskey. A smile was on his face, and he didn't even whine about the musty quality to Bobby's basement.

"What's got you so cheerful?" Dean asked bitingly.

"You two! Moose and squirrel!" Crowley laughed, smiling widely. "Now that Lucifer is out of the picture, I'm leading the demon armies. Me! King of Hell! Can you believe it?" He laughed. "I'm feeling very generous when it comes to the people who put me there. _And_ ," he looked at the floor. "You didn't even put me in a demon trap," he grinned even wider. "It's a good day."

"Good, because we need your help," Sam said, tone low. "Specifically, we need Raphael out of the picture."

"Castiel has told me he wants to do the end of the world, all over again," he concurred, setting the whiskey down. "You don't need to convince me he's wrong. But," Crowley dipped his head in fake lament, "I don't know how to get Raphael out of the picture."

"Do you know of a way we could stuff someone else into the cage, without opening it up to let Lucifer and Michael out?" Sam pressed.

The new King of Hell frowned. "Not off the top of my head. Folks are always so obsessed with the formal way of opening it, the seals, the prophecies, you know. Let me look around, I'll let you know. Anything else?"

Dean's tone was flippant. "Yeah, what's the catch?"

Crowley smiled again. "No catch this time, boys. I want Raphael gone just as much as you."

In a blink, he was gone.

"He's right," Sam followed up. "He wants Raphael gone too. Our 'interests are aligned,' as it were."

"But what about when they're not aligned?" Dean growled.

"We'll go back to being enemies then," Sam said, sighing. "When did working with demons become something we did?"

"When there were things worse than demons," Dean sighed. "Just… I hate this."

Sam frowned. _Yeah, I know_.

Dean looked up at the basement ceiling, and said "Cas, angel of The Lord that Left, I just want to let you know that we called Crowley and asked him if there's a way to stuff Raphael in that cage with Michael and Lucifer. He said he'd look around."

Sam led the way, and they climbed up the basement stairs.

"Has it occurred to you that shoving all three archangels in one cage might be a bad idea?" Sam asked. "We don't even know if it can hold more than one archangel safely, and then they're going to spend millennia down there, angry and plotting."

Dean smirked, and said "You know what? Like Bobby always says, we'll leave that one for hunters in spacesuits."

The next few weeks passed by slowly. All the new hunters were handling the normal cases, which left Sam and Dean a lot of time to bounce around the Singer property fixing up cars and researching archangels.

Chuck spent his time trying to stay out of the way. Castiel had carved angelic sigils into his ribs, but the Winchesters decided not to relocate him to a safehouse as they usually would. For all they knew, Chuck was another antichrist, and they didn't want a loose nuke like that slipping through their fingers _again_.

Chuck didn't realize any of this, and just thought they were ignoring him like a piece of furniture. He curled up further into the chair he'd made his own.

Dean walked into the house to see the screen open to a text editor, and resisted the urge to slam the laptop shut. "That isn't Supernatural, is it?"

Chuck looked up, red rimmed eyes from alcohol. "No more visions, remember?" he sighed. "No, some other crap novel of mine."

Dean eyed the hunched man. "Do you ever do anything other than wallow?" His tone was a little more condescending than he'd meant, but it happened and he wasn't gonna apologize.

Chuck gave Dean a surly glance, but said nothing. It reminded Dean of a fourteen year old. _You don't know my pain!_ "What's there to do otherwise?" he asked instead. "Really? You boys work so hard to save the world, and yet people still suffer and die."

"Less!" Dean insisted. "Way, _way_ less."

Chuck looked like he was going to argue, but decided not to. "Yeah, I suppose you're right," he said quietly. Then he looked at his laptop, and continued to furiously type.

Dean rolled his eyes, and said nothing.

The next few weeks moved slowly.

They fell into a comfortable routine at Bobby's, passing smaller hunts off to other hunters not currently fighting Raphael. Castiel had a tendency to arrive unannounced, and they didn't want to be in the middle of a hunt when he did.

Every time Castiel showed, he had the same report. No progress has been made on finding Balthazaar.

Sam and Bobby were researching ways to find an archangel, ways to trap an angel permanently, ways to kill an archangel, ways to depower an archangel, anything that would make Raphael unable to start the apocalypse up again.

Every so often, Chuck would wander over to help, curious about what they were reading or doing, and Sam was always patient in explaining to him what was going on. Occasionally he stepped up to help with research, contribute thoughts, or do things that needed doing.

Team free will was floored with how well Chuck integrated into their group.

Bobby had set Chuck some menial task involving moving tires from one end of the lot to the other, both to get Chuck out of his laptop and building some sort of strength that didn't involve prenatural fighting skills.

Dean tilted his head as he watched Chuck struggle to wrap his arms around the gigantic truck tire he was lifting.

"You know, he's not so bad anymore. Remember when we met him and he just kind of hid from everything?" he said to Sam, standing next to him.

Sam snorted. "Yeah, it annoyed the shit out of me."

Dean nodded toward the shorter man. "Well, look at him. He's manned up, he's handling this craptastic situation pretty okay. Most people would have lost it by now."

Sam laughed reservedly. "I'll admit it, Dean, I actually kind of like the guy. Who knew he had such a good sense of humor?"

Dean frowned. "He is almost changing my opinion on shitty people. Like, if Chuck has a reason for being this way, maybe they all do."

Sam snorted, this time louder. "No. I met a lot of shitty writers who thought they were deep at Stanford, and ninety percent of them thought their halfhearted attempt at suicide when their girlfriend dumped them constituted knowing the darkness of the world."

"Oh, good, I thought I was going to have to adjust my world view." Dean looked back out the window. "Nope, everyone still sucks. Good."

"Remember, Chuck's not a human, anyways, probably," Sam continued. "So your view of him doesn't even have to change your view of humanity."

"Thank you Sammy, defending my critical worldview until the end."

"I'm supposed to be the hopeful one, not you," he quipped.

Dean turned to him. "But you haven't been lately," he said quietly.

They were still watching Chuck struggle to haul tires across the lot.

"Roll them!" Dean yelled across the lot.

Chuck looked up, spotted them watching him struggle. He made a snarky expression, but rolled the tire to it's destination.

Sam shrugged. "We have no leads on Raphael. Cas says… you know what he says." _That he gains angels every day_. "We don't even have a half-assed plan."

"We didn't have a plan for Lucifer, and we figured that out," Dean said. "I don't mean to minimize your sacrifice, Sam, but it turned out all right."

Sam nodded. "I know, I know. I'm glad it did. Just… hard to see when it will end. Maybe we kill Raphael, but then he's got followers, and what then?"

"We figure it out, like we always do," Dean said.

Dusk found everyone, sans Castiel, gathered around the kitchen table and a bottle or two of alcohol. They'd all had more than their fair share, and it was late in the night as they gathered around the table.

"You haven't officially been on a hunt yet," Dean hummed around his drink, "But you've had Castiel's molar in your hair and lived to see him resurrected, so in my book, you're one of us."

"But I'm a huge coward!" Chuck laughed. "Every time you guys showed up, all I wanted to do was run away."

"That tapered off," Sam tipped his drink toward him. "Near the end you took on that ghost, that was pretty cool."

Chuck shrugged. "What was I going to do, let it kill everyone?"

"You'd be surprised what people do," Dean said sagely. "They panic, put themselves first, then it all goes to shit."

Chuck heaved a sigh. "I'm just tired of being useless."

"You won't be useless much longer at this pace," Bobby quipped.

"The moment Castiel says he needs us, I'm ready," he affirmed. "As ready as I'll get." There was something in the set of his shoulders, so determined.

"Why are you always trying to prove yourself, Chuck?" Sam slurred, having had one too many for even his big frame. "I mean, you know Dean and I's life story, hell, you wrote it, but we don't know yours."

Chuck's face fell. "I'm happy to blather on about the morbid past, self hating writer and all, but I doubt you want to hear it."

Dean perked up, and filled his glass. He was going to need to be more drunk for morbid childhood conversations. "No, we do," he assured. "Sammy's a sucker for morbid conversations while drunk."

Bobby nodded, also downing more of the strong alcohol. "It's true."

Chuck followed suit as well, shuddering as it went down his throat. "You guys know I was on foster and all, Bobby practically audited my records. But what they don't say is how horrid the foster families were. Most of them were just neglectful, taking in children for the tax break, no big deal. But some of them were worse than that."

He looked down. "Linda and Ron. They were influenced by demons or something, I don't know. They made it their mission to beat every child that they received. They were busted two years into my living with them, but that wasn't nearly fast enough."

Chuck cleared his throat. "But honestly, I was never worried about me all that much, you know?" He looked away, as the large pulls of whiskey began to affect everyone. They were leaning forward, swaying slightly, listening rapturously.

"I couldn't save the others, you know? They wouldn't run away, they were too afraid to call the cops. I just felt so hopeless. Why was this happening? Why wouldn't they stick up for themselves?" He shook his head.

Chuck's eyes changed, and he didn't notice, but everyone else did.

His whole gaze became heavy, and in an instant it was as if he was someone else.

"They just wouldn't save themselves. They had everything they needed, but they wouldn't do it. Did they want to live in misery?" His voice was empty. "I've never understood what possessed humanity to throw themselves into these things. It's not even the evil they throw themselves to…"

None of them missed the way he said "they."

"…it's the death. The wages of sin is death. That isn't some punishment, it's a statement of fact. When they throw yourself emptily and wholeheartedly into that nothingness, they die. They don't go to hell because anyone is punishing them; they go because they just don't want to go to heaven. There isn't enough of them left to want anything anymore."

"I know," came Dean's heavy agreement. "There were so many people in hell that were already broken when they got there." Sam knew it was a maudlin night, then, because Dean had to be really drunk to talk about hell in more than vague allusions. "Most everyone was, actually; you could always tell when someone made a deal, because they were the only ones not broken upon arrival."

"No matter how hard I try, they just keep doing it," came Chuck's heavy voice. "Throwing themselves to darkness."

"That's why we fight, isn't it?" Sam's quiet voice came. "We gotta do what we can, even if we can't save everyone."

The otherworldly quality seeped into Chuck's tone. "But what good does it do in the end?"

"People are alive!" Dean insisted. "Families are together for that much longer before they die! Heaven sucks, yeah, but it's better than hell!"

"I would still have my wife if someone told me," Bobby said somberly. "That's why I keep this all up," his voice was heavier than even Dean's. "It's why I'm still here."

Chuck dragged his heavy body up, and back to bed, looking like a different person.

The three men at the table looked at each other in his wake.

"Something about the way he says things makes me want to listen," Bobby murmured. The words were the words of a literary drama queen, but something about the way he said them made it seem like he knew what it meant.

"I know," Sam agreed. "Lots of people talk about loss, and say emo shit like that, but… something happened to him."

"Yeah, and he doesn't even know what is the worst part," Dean shook his head, and then put it in his arms. "Or maybe that's the good part." He put his hands on his stomach. "Ugh, I haven't drank this much since…"

"Since like last month, give it up," Sam said.

"Did you guys see the way his face changed?" he continued. "Like one minute he was just blabbering about a bad childhood, and the next -"

"- he was talking about something else entirely. He used 'they' when referring to humanity again," Bobby finished. "My bet is on pagan god."

"I'll take you up on that," Sam slurred. "I'll go for higher order angel"

"How likely is that?" Bobby bickered back. The rest of the night they took bets on whether Chuck was an angel, a demon, a pagan god, a confused psychic, or any of the above.

Chuck was asleep on his cot in the last bedroom, blissfully unaware.

"Oh my God, don't ever let me drink with you guys again," Chuck groaned the next morning, bent over a glass of juice. "I haven't drank that much since college. You are horrible influences."

Sam and Dean must have been made of stronger stuff, because they were not nearly as hung over as Chuck.

"Do you even remember last night?" His tone was joking, but they were both paying attention to the reply.

"You guys asked me about my shitty foster family, and then…" something crossed his face for a moment, then vanished. "Nothing. Usually when I black out, someone informs me that I said a bunch of maudlin things about fate or destiny." He groaned.

Sam tilted his head, shrugging. "Yeah, pretty much."

Chuck shook his head, spooning cereal into his mouth and missing every so often. "Don't ever let me do that again."

"No can do, Charles," Dean said, happily eating the bacon he found. "This is an alcoholic household."

Sam bent over, and plucked a piece of bacon from Dean's plate.

"Hey, get your own!" Dean slapped Sam's hand, but he appeared unconcerned. "Fucking little brothers."

Bobby trudged down the stairs, tired, but still less hung over than Chuck.

"How is Bobby less hung over than I am?" Chuck squinted up at the older man. "I didn't even have that much and I blacked out! I don't even remember being that drunk!"

"He blacked out?" Bobby asked, pointing at Chuck who was now making a feeble attempt to cover his ears.

Sam looked at him significantly. "Just for the tail end of the conversation."

Bobby nodded. "Well, living here you'll grow a tolerance."

"You say that like I'll be around much longer," he said dryly.

Bobby shrugged. "The boys crash here whenever they're not hunting, so until y'all hit the road you will be."

"He's hitting the road with us?" Dean stuck his thumb out at Chuck.

"Someone's gotta train him, and it ain't me," Bobby said, pulling leftover burgers from the fridge. "You two are the best hunters in town, and apparently he has some sort of magic secret past. We aren't passing him off to a stranger."

Dean groaned, but shut up when he saw Chuck's hurt face. "Sorry Chuck," he grumbled, "I just don't like training new people."

"I don't really wanna be trained, but it doesn't seem optional at this point," he grumbled back.

"Not with all the weird coincidences lining up around you, it's not."

Dean was drinking a beer and watching daytime tv when there was a knock at the door.

"I'll get it," Chuck said, prying himself from his customary position under his laptop.

He opened the door to find a well-dressed man standing there, complete with a pocket square.

"Hello?" he asked, feeling like something was off.

"Crowley," the man offered. "And you are?"

"Irrelevant," Dean growled, suddenly behind Chuck.

"This is that missing prophet, isn't it?" Crowley asked, eyes narrowing at the man. "Chuck, right?"

Dean rolled his eyes and yanked the door open.

"Oh, no," Crowley scoffed, eyeing the hallway. "I know better than to walk over a rug."

Dean looked down, and made an annoyed noise. "Sam! Bobby! Crowley's at the door!" he yelled before stepping outside.

Chuck stepped outside too, wondering what the hell was going on.

"Crowley," Dean grumbled, sensing Chuck's plight, "is the King of Hell."

Chuck jumped. "Pardon?"

he was less than pleased with how high his voice came out.

Castiel appeared on the porch aside Dean.

Crowley merely raised an eyebrow at the man. "You're the first prophet I've ever met, you know?" he said. "Less than impressive."

"What do you want, Crowley," Bobby said, stepping out on the porch with Sam.

"Christ, you guys act like I'm here to hurt you," he said, mock hurt. "No, just bringing an update. Unfortunately, I could _not_ find a way to stuff Raphael in that cage, too. Transferring individuals out? Possible. Transferring individuals in? Not possible."

"Why would there be a way to take someone out but not put them in?" Sam asked. "You know what, nevermind. So that's that, then?"

"It would seem so," Crowley said, hands in his pockets.

"You got a way for us to kill him? Any ideas?" Dean asked instead.

Chuck was uncomfortable with how comfortable he was becoming with this situation; having a chat with the King of Hell on the porch, like it wasn't a problem.

Crowley shrugged. "None that Castiel hasn't thought of."

"It would appear our only option is to find Balthazaar," Castiel intoned. "As I have been trying to do. Would you know of a way to find a specific angel?"

Crowley shook his head. "That's one I've actually been working on for some time, which should come as no surprise to you," he drawled. "No such thing exists. I've got some witches on the payroll, but they haven't made any breakthroughs."

Dean shrugged. "Do let us know when you find it, will you?"

"I suspect we will be made aware," Castiel said, turning a threatening eye to Crowley.

Crowley smiled. "This dumb angel is the smartest of you lot," and vanished.

"Charming," Chuck said dryly.

"He only gets better," Dean griped as he went back inside.


	4. Chapter 4

"I don't remember yesterday at all," Chuck called, pounding downstairs at 11AM.

"What?" Sam mumbled, mouth full of ham sandwich.

Dean was sipping water, reviving himself from his own mild hangover. They had all gotten somewhat drunk the night before, but Chuck specifically hadn't had more than a drink or two.

"I don't remember yesterday," Chuck groaned, holding his head. "I didn't really realize it, until I looked at my phone and saw it skipped a day. When I try to recall what happened, it's like…" Chuck shook his head. "I know time passed, but it's all very black."

Chuck groaned, and grabbed his head again. "I woke up to an empty whiskey bottle and a horrible hangover, too, which is pretty normal for this. Should we figure out what I did yesterday?"

"Well, I didn't see you," Dean mumbled tiredly. "I assumed you'd gone into town or were in your room writing or something."

"I was out there, working on cars for Bobby all day, didn't see you," Sam shrugged. They had to pay off the cost of being at Bobby's somehow, and Sam always tried to do honest work when he could.

"I turned on the GPS for your phone, it should tell us," Dean said, standing and swiping the phone from Chuck's pocket.

"You turned on my GPS?" Chuck complained, a little indignantly.

Dean was already clicking through the phone. "It says you were…. Nowhere. No location found." Dean looked up. "Do you know how to turn off a phone GPS, Chuck?"

"I didn't even know how to turn one on until now," He griped, swiping the phone back from Dean's hands.

Dean waved his hand in Chuck's face. "Don't turn it off, it could come in handy,"

"You must have turned it off, unless you weren't on earth, which I _doubt_ ," Sam said. "There's got to be some way to find out if you turned it off…" Sam trailed off, opening his laptop.

"You _doubt_ I wasn't on earth," Chuck repeated. "Not 'there's no way you weren't on earth,' but you _doubt_ I wasn't on earth."

"Well, geekboy is on the problem," Dean waved his hand, sitting back down and summarily ignoring Chuck's comment. "No need to be in some unholy rush. Just keep your phone on you until we know what's going on."

Chuck looked around, exasperated. "Fine, I guess." His gaze settled on Dean. "You've taught me how to defend myself, wanna teach me about cars? I don't want to be stranded because of a stupid car problem I can't fix someday."

Dean's eyebrows raised. "You know, Chuck, most people don't take to well to the notion of never going home again."

"I'm a foster kid, Dean, I never had a home."

Dean shrugged. "I keep forgetting, dark past, tortured soul, whatever. Come on." He got up, enthusiastic about the notion of someone _listening to him ramble about cars._

Sam's eyes didn't follow him as he tapped away at his laptop.

"His phone's GPS wasn't turned off," Sam announced as he walked into the garage. "It was on, but had no cell towers available to triangulate his location."

"Well, that doesn't mean I wasn't on earth, yeah?" Chuck's voice came, almost hopefully. "There are plenty of places cell towers don't reach."

Sam frowned. "Yeah, but none of those places are within one day's travel round trip."

"Maybe an angel zapped me," Chuck suggested.

"The only angel who should know where you are is Cas, and he hasn't been around to do any zapping," Dean said.

"Have we spoken to Cas in a while?" Sam asked placidly. What he was really asking was if Castiel had dropped in to talk to Dean, alone.

"No," Dean said, ignoring the implication. "He said he'd hit us up if the battle went earthside. It hasn't, so here we are."

"Crowley hasn't turned up with anything, either," Sam continued, "Assuming since he hasn't stopped by again." Sam put his hands on his hips. "Well, I am feeling pretty useless right now."

"We could use that," Dean said mildly. "There is too much of that 'destiny' crap hanging around. I'd like to spent a minute being normal hunters again, you know?"

Sam nodded in agreement.

Chuck was hoping the conversation would get off topic, and they would forget his whole amnesia thing. He was regretting ever mentioning it, he didn't even want to think about it. He'd lived his whole life so far not knowing, what did it matter if he never did? Whose to say it _wasn't_ just him getting drunk and breaking his phone?

But no such luck.

"But, Castiel didn't zap you anywhere. Where can we dig for more information?" Sam was still talking.

"Castiel might be able to use his angel mojo to dig something up," Dean said easily. "Castiel, Angel of the absent Lord, we would like your help -"

Castiel was there, instantly.

"That was fast," Dean commented.

"You are my earth liasons in the battle to save the earth," Castiel said. "You are important allies. You are also my closest friends."

Dean raised his eyebrows. "Chuck went missing for all of yesterday, and his phone GPS says he was out of cell tower range. We were wondering if there was some sort of angel thing you could work, you know, sense bad mojo on him or whatever." His tone was brusque.

Sam noted that Dean whined about Castiel's attitude toward him, but sometimes he was just as bad.

"There is nothing I can see on him immediately, and so can't think of a place to start," Castiel offered. "There is a procedure, but…"

"What?" Chuck asked with trepidation. More and more these days, he got a bad feeling whenever they turned up with new information.

"I could examine the state of his soul," Castiel said. "He shows no signs of psychic ability? Such things are written on the spirit. On his spirit I could read the truth of his existence."

"Great, do it!" Dean exclaimed. "That was easy. Why didn't you say that before?"

"It is excruciating," Castiel intoned, turning to Chuck. "Painful in the extreme."

Chuck shook his head fervently. "No, no way. It's not about the pain - I mean," he laughed, "it's about the pain. But also I'm having just a terrible feeling about this." He sighed. "I don't care if this is cowardly, but I don't want to know any more. And if I don't want to know any more, I definitely don't want excruciating pain."

Sam gave Chuck a withering look.

"Don't look at me like that," Chuck bit out, angry. "Don't you wish you could have gone back to a time before knowing about the demon blood?"

"Yeah, it was bad for a while, but I got used to it!" He exclaimed. "Now I'm glad I know."

Chuck saw the whole thing happen, had slaved over the words as he edited them again and again. He knew damn well that wasn't true.

"I can't believe humans," Chuck said, rubbing his face.

"You are a human," Castiel said, tilting his head.

"I know," Chuck replied despairingly. He shook his head. "No more digging around my repressed secrets, that's final." He stalked out of the garage.

Sam threw his hands up. "Fine. The truth will come out anyways, it always does," his frustrated voice called after him.

"Cas, while you're here, we spoke to Crowley," Dean began.

"And he has found no way to trap Raphael," Castiel completed the sentence. "He started reporting directly to me. And after he has outlived his usefulness, I will smite him into nothingness."

"Me too," Dean growled. "Well, thanks anyways Cas. Anything we can do?"

"I'll let you know," he said, vanishing again.

"No word on Balthazaar, or new leads for Raphael?" Sam asked the empty space where Cas was.

"Evidently not on earth," Dean snarked. "That's it, we gotta go on a hunt."

Sam pinched the bridge of his nose. "Chuck is gonna bitch about it."

As it was, Chuck did _not_ bitch about it. He didn't say much as they all grabbed their bags and left Bobby, the grumpy old man sending them off with gruff remonstrances that they all knew he didn't mean.

The whole time at Bobby's, Chuck was feeling inferior because of his shorter stature, his weaker muscles that didn't grow up in training. He never thought of himself as unmanly; he never thought of himself as manly, either, but he felt unmanly after two months of watching the Winchesters rip open packages with their teeth and compete as to who could crush a giant beer can the smallest with their trash-can-lid sized hands.

But now Chuck was thanking his shorter than average height as he stretched out in the Impala backseat. It had surprisingly easy suspension, and he was able to get some quality napping done during the drive, watching the scenery pass them by.

"That guy likes the simple pleasures, doesn't he?" Dean remarked as he observed dead-to-the-world Chuck in the backseat.

Sam frowned. "He's worrying me, Dean," he said, tone imploring. "It's like he already knew how to fight, and we just reminded him. When we met him, he was a coward, almost pathetic - and yet every day he seems more resolved and brave. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad he's not an obnoxious coward anymore - but it's weird."

"I don't know, Sam; you're a tortured soul or whatever." Dean shrugged. "You spent your teen years neck deep in drugs and morbid books, but you came out of it."

"When I was 22," Sam said, grimacing. "He's not 22."

"Yeah, well…" Dean paused. "He never had Jess."

Sam turned to look out the window. Dean was right; without Jess, there's no guarantee he wouldn't be his own little depressed philosopher.

"It's not like I don't trust the guy," Sam said, more quietly. "Something about him is so trustable. I'm just saying, there's something big we don't know."

"It puts me off too," Dean admitted. "Random memory lapses, disappearing and not telling us, the…" He waved his hands, presumably gesturing to the way a 5'7" man flattened 6'1" Dean. "And sometimes he just has this look on his face…"

"…like he's a million years old," Sam finished. "Says something mysterious, and walks away."

Dean shook his head. "Do you think he's putting on an act?" he said, voice uncertain.

They had come to call Chuck a friend in the past few weeks, and Dean didn't like that. He didn't want to add someone else to the motley crew if they were just going to betray them, too.

"No," Sam whispered, feeling the same thing. "I don't know, Dean, but I really don't think so."

"We're here!" Dean pounded the head unit, the metallic noise startling Chuck awake.

"Jesus Christ!" Chuck yelled, sitting up wildly.

Sam laughed at him. "Hunters need to wake up silently, Chuck, learn it," he quipped, getting out of the car and heavily slamming the door.

"How do you teach yourself to wake up silently?" Chuck grumbled, rolling over and out of the car himself. He looked up at their shitty motel room door, complete with peeling paint. He'd written the scene a thousand times, but his words didn't do the reality justice.

"Sleep lightly," Dean said, pulling his duffel from the trunk. "Sleep on the couch," he amended, crossing the cement stoop into the shitty hotel room. In one movement, Dean was asleep on the bed closest to the door.

 _To protect Sammy_ , supplied Chuck's mind.

He supposed it was invasive, the way he knew everything about them, but he never really felt bad about it. He almost felt like he was supposed to know it.

That was something he placed firmly in the category of Do Not Tell Sam And Dean.

"I sort of understand why you guys were mad I wrote those books about you," Chuck said as Sam carried his stuff in. "No words really do the reality of how shitty this motel room is justice.

Sam laughed. He slept on the car ride over, and so instead sat at the table and opened the laptop. "Gotta cook up a quick cover story, right?"

Chuck nodded. They were going to pretend to be federal agents, or park rangers, or something equally ludicrously illegal. In another day, he would have balked at both the risk involved, and the immorality of it all.

After being zapped here and there and everywhere by Castiel, the notion of illegality just didn't really bother him.

"Should I practice, or…?" Chuck asked the empty air.

"No, we find that acting practice doesn't help." Sam said passively from his position hunched over his laptop. "You just get all up in your own head about it. You'll do better if you just go with it."

"Right, okay," Chuck said uncertainly. He looked around, and patted his hands on his jeans. "Anyone want food?"

"Burger," Dean grunted from the bed.

"You wrote fifteen books about us, Chuck, you know what our favorite foods are," came Sam's dry voice.

"I never knew as much as the fans did," he mumbled. "I forget half the shit I write."

Sam sighed. "That's oddly comforting. Burger, smaller than Dean's though. Make it sort of healthy."

"Burger, pie and sort of healthy burger," Chuck repeated. "Got it," he said as he walked out the door.

The air was brisk as he walked to the nearby Biggersons. He'd slept most of the car ride there, and was now bristling with anxious energy. It wasn't just at the prospect of a hunt, though; no, Chuck felt oddly assured about the hunt they were about to go on. His instincts were telling him something else was around the corner.

And what was with that, by the way? His instincts had always been stronger than normal, but all they did was keep him away from the worst of the abuse his harsh foster parents sometimes doled out.

During the apocalypse, his instincts were louder; mostly they said to stay away from Sam and Dean, or angels, or anything bad. Sometimes he considered sending them manuscripts, to help them in their hunts, but he never ended up doing it. He just wanted to stay the hell away.

And now he had some sort of secret repressed past, and his instincts were telling him to stay away from that too. Did this hidden part of himself know that getting involved with them would be the end of his ignorance? Was that where his instincts came from?

The small town cashier was baked at his post, and lazily exchanged the cash in exchange for the food.

Carrying the plastic bag back, Chuck wondered for the first time if he might actually like to know what he didn't know.

What he didn't know gave him pretty kickass fighting skills. The self-loathing that followed him around, that drove him to a drunken stupor every night, faded more than it ever had. He felt like he was worth something now. Whose to say that this hidden knowledge wouldn't make him feel better?

 _You might hate yourself_ because _of what you don't know_ , the rational part of him added.

Sure, most of the self-loathing came from parents who never told him he was worth it, and then growing up to live barely above the poverty line. But he was a published writer, wasn't he? He escaped out of fast food, that was worth something. Worth more than utter self-hate. There were three times as many people who never got published.

Chuck shook his head. He'd never been introspective, always shied away from his 'inner self' or whatever.

 _Perhaps there's a reason why_.

Chuck shook his head again as he entered the motel room, food in hand.

Yeah, the reason was that it sucked, the end.

Dean got up to grab the food, and returned to the bed. Within minutes, the food was in his stomach and he was asleep again, truly out this time. Sam mildly ate his food at a normal pace, used to his brother's 'antics.'

"I spoke to Dean, he's okay with us doing some due diligence while he sleeps," Sam informed. "So suit up, we're gonna be feds." He stood up, stretching. "I'll be changed in a minute."

"I didn't think to pack a suit," Chuck supplied rather uselessly.

Sam rolled his eyes at the ceiling. Then, he looked at Chuck apologetically. "Sorry, I just find new hunters to be a pain. You're the best one we've ever trained, but it's still annoying. You haven't had a moral crisis yet about pretending to be anyone." He huffed. "Hold on, let me come to the store with you, make sure you don't pick out a crap suit. Got any money?"

"All my money is in that house," Chuck mumbled. "Spent it all when I thought the world was gonna end."

Sam barely didn't roll his eyes this time. "We'll sell the house if it's still there after this is all over, it would be unethical to sell it to someone else when Raphael might come smiting." He shut the door, and proceeded to change. "I have money!" he yelled through the door.

Dean mumbled, something like "shut the fuck up Sam," and rolled over.

 _Money you stole_ , Chuck said. He thought it was wrong, but he couldn't find it within himself to care too much. Someone could let go of a few hundred dollars and their credit score if it saved a life.

Normal story, ghost of a dead wife, murdered and or maybe raped, left in the house to rot, and now she was killing for revenge.

They were digging around the house because the lovely wedded looked to be stuck in a wall, or a floor, or somewhere inconvenient. Her body was never found.

"Amelia Beghar," Sam read from the page. "She and her son disappeared one day and were never found. Husband turned up dead soon after, drowned himself in the lake. Not long after, the son was found in the lake, too. But Amelia never was."

"Think Amelia snapped and murdered the others?" Dean asked.

Sam made a face. "Probably. Husband and son were cremated, but she was never seen again."

Dean rolled his eyes. "Great, she's probably dead in that house in the walls or some weird shit."

Chuck was wearing a starchy, cheap but well fit suit. He dipped his head, and hated that he looked like a munchkin next to the tree trunk that was Sam Winchester.

They were in a police department, literally _in_ the police building, breaking the law, pretending to be feds. Chuck wrung his hands.

It didn't escape Chuck's notice that most of his characteristic anxiety was gone. He hated anxiety; hated the panic attacks, the shaking and the shame.

In this new life, he didn't suffer from it. His hands were oddly stable holding a shotgun, and he didn't run to the bottle anymore to get the crushing feeling to go away.

"I'm Agent Jagger, this is my trainee agent Smith," Sam said smoothly, introducing Chuck with a nice generic name. "He'll be mostly observing, but he's an active member of the team."

"Can I call your director?" the policewoman asked smoothly in return. Her hair was tied into a straight and tight ponytail, her southern accent laced with professionalism and suspicion. A small-town cop who was once big time.

Sam smiled. A critical agent would make for excellent practice for Chuck. "Of course," he responded just, pulling a card from his jacket. "If you would like, we can wait here."

She gave them an eye, and dialed the phone.

After a quick and growled conversation with Director Singer, she was on board.

"Sorry about that, but we're taught to be suspicious of trainees," She explained in a much nicer tone of voice. "It's very unusual for trainees to be introduced as such."

Sam nodded, playing along smoothly. "Of course. Special circumstances at the regional office called for his training to be expedited, and this is a small case."

"Yeah, small enough that they wouldn't normally send agents," the blonde woman said, loosening up. "Missing teens."

"After this long they are probably dead," Sam said brusquely, looking through the files. He sat down in the metal chair opposite her desk.

Chuck lingered behind, standing awkwardly. He tried to look more like he belonged, straightening his back.

"That might be true in cities, but not here," she replied, a little hurt. "After their booze fest they'll turn up."

Sam frowned. He wanted to say 'they didn't 23 years ago,' but that was too much time for him to say there's a pattern. No serial killer or earthly explanation made sense.

"Nevertheless, we'll find them," he sighed. "Thanks for your time, Sheriff."

"If you need anything, don't hesitate," she replied, waving them off. They were out of the building quickly.

"So what now?" Chuck asked when they were in the car again.

"You don't need to ask that every thirty seconds," He huffed in frustration, turning the keys in the engine. The Impala roared to life beneath them.

Sam sighed, about to make an apology, but Chuck beat him to it. "No, you're right. I should think more. Next, we would go interview their friends, to ask why they decided to go camping in an abandoned house?"

Sam smiled a little. "Yeah, that's right."

The friends gave a very standard response; to literally go fuck around and drink alcohol where no parents would catch them.

Armored up, Dean, Sam and Chuck pull up to the house, in the cover of dark.

"Great, home construction," Dean griped as they stalked towards the house. "I hate it when they hide the bodies. Makes a salt and burn so much more tedious."

"You like the fun of it, don't lie," Sam quipped quietly. He kicked the dilapidated door open, one swift and quiet motion.

 _A well oiled machine_ , Chuck thought, watching the way they moved around one another.

He followed them into the building, and was hit with the scent of mold and rot.

Immediately, Chuck felt something standing in the house. It wasn't a supernatural spidy-sense. No, he felt the sadness and tragedy that permeated the home. He felt like he knew the family that once lived here… a bright eyed boy, a father and wife, once so happy. He felt sad, so sad for them, it reached down into his gut, into his legs and into the floor.

"Chuck?" Sam queried, stalling in the living room.

Chuck started; he could have sworn he was standing on a rich new rug and hardwood floor, but there was no new hardwood floor anymore. The floor beneath their feet was rotting and old.

"They were so happy once," Chuck supplied quietly.

Dean started. "What the fuck, Chuck?" he asked. "Anyone tell you you're a weird guy, Chuck?" He pointed forward, and they crept through the house, quietly taking stock.

They didn't have to continue long. The once-happy wife appeared before them, hair matted with blood and teeth pulled back in a snarl. Chuck was struck by her eyes, faded from blue and narrowed in incomprehensible anger.

Sam and Dean's instincts were to raise the gun and fire; but she dodged the salt. Instead of appearing before either of the brothers, she appeared in front of Chuck.

Chuck knew his first instinct should be to raise the salt gun he was holding, but he didn't.

He didn't even feel panicked. For some reason, he was sure she wouldn't hurt him.

She was blown away from in front of him, and suddenly Dean was front and center. "Chuck! When the angry spirit appears in front of you, you shoot!"

He turned to Dean, "I know! I know. Just…" he trailed off. "I felt so sure, for some reason, that she wouldn't hurt me."

Sam tilted his head to look at Chuck. "Weird feeling or not, shoot the ghost next time, all right?"

He flushed, and nodded, face burning with shame. What a stupid response to something that was _definitely_ going to try and kill him.

Sam and Dean, unbeknownst to Chuck, looked at each other. Most people shit their pants when confronted by a murderous ghost, and Chuck's response was to feel pity for her and not defend himself.

"I'm not eager to die, I'll shoot her next time," Chuck assured them, rubbing his hair. "Really."

Dean rolled his eyes for what felt like the fiftieth time, and led them into the basement. "Look alive."

Sam picked up a nearby tire iron (abandoned houses always seemed to have tire irons laying around), and immediately started putting holes through the walls. Dean looked for hidden passageways, or rooms, and Chuck busied himself with standing guard while the experts worked.

It didn't take long for Amelia to appear in the middle of the room, hissing at Dean.

"Amelia!" Chuck called, to get her attention. She turned and made eye contact with him, and he _knew_.

Amelia Beghar moved in with John Beghar because they were in love. But he wasn't such a good father, anger got the best of him, and in one fight they were both shouting. He was accusing her of sleeping around, and their fight got physical. In the struggle, he banged her head against a counter. In an instant, she was dead.

Chuck saw it with horrifying clarity, saw the fresh blood seeping into the kitchen tiles.

John cried, how he cried. He cried while he was cleaning up the blood. He buried her in the backyard and snapped, taking his son and himself to go drown in the lake. They fought, they weren't the best parents, but it was never meant to end like this.

"It's okay, Amelia," he said, raising his arms. "It's over, Amelia, he can't hurt you."

Amelia's expression changed, softened in an instant.

There were many people whose time was not yet here, but Amelia's had come.

"It's time for you to rest."

His hand touched down on her shoulder, and she vanished in golden light.

"Her remains are in the backyard," he finally said.

"Chuck?" Sam asked, eyebrows raised.

Chuck blinked.

Blinked again.

Blinked a third time.

Suddenly, he was hit with a splitting, agonizing headache.

"What the hell just happened?" He groaned. "Did one of you shoot her?"

"Don't you remember, Chuck?" Dean asked uncertainly.

He nursed his head. "No, why? Did I just do something weird?"

Dean opened his mouth, but Chuck raised his hand. "Forget it, I don't want to know. All I want is Vicodin. Is she gone?"

"Yeah, pretty sure," Sam said slowly, "But they're buried in the back."

"Well, at least we can dig without risking attack," Dean said lightly.

Chuck laughed. "I've got Vicodin in the car," Sam offered, and Chuck followed him to go get it.

They went into the backyard. "I'll bet she's planted here," Dean gestured to a tree that was oddly centered in the side yard. "Trees are old grave markers."

Chuck nodded tiredly. "So we have to dig through all those roots?"

" _You_ have to dig through all those roots," Dean emphasized, as Sam handed him one of the shovels they got from the trunk.

"Are you hazing me?" Chuck held the shovel out in front of him. "Is that what this is?"

"No, but now that you mention it, we totally should."

Chuck, for his part, just rolled his eyes and started digging.

An angel sensed the unnatural power, and flew swiftly to the house. He watched as Chuck sent the spirit to rest, and relayed a message to Raphael.

" _We have found the Winchesters and their Prophet."_

" _Good,"_ was Raphael's smooth reply. _"Stay with them. I am coming."_

"This is horrible work," Chuck whined as he dug. "I mean, I wrote a lot of these scenes, and man were they boring to write, but they're even more boring to live."

"I don't know," Sam replied easily, digging with much more stamina. "After a while, they become relaxing."

"Hard work is good for a man," Dean agreed lazily, drinking a beer he took from the car and sitting on a tree stump.

"Ha ha," Chuck laughed dryly. "I don't know, I don't think hunting is for me. Weird amnesia? Hard work that feels pointless?"

"Maybe not," Sam admitted, "But you're in the life. Weird visions and magic powers are a permanent entry card." Sam took a breath to pause, still digging. "You'll find your place."

"I even had a weird vision once," Dean joked. "Although, some other psychic planted it there, so…"

Chuck gave a half-smile. "I feel more at home in a book. Maybe I could help with research instead, I am more of a writer and sad philosopher than I am some action hero."

"Our Samamntha here is a sad philosopher, and yet he's the second best hunter in the country," Dean jeered.

"You always make fun of me for that, Dean, but I'm not that much of a tortured soul," Sam huffed. "Chuck actually is."

"Not gonna lie, Chuck, I looked down on that sort of whiny shit until we got to know you," Dean said amicably. "I always thought it was people wallowing, but some people are just born fucked up, huh?"

Chuck huffed, removing the dirt from the graves. Sweat was plastered to his forehead, and he fought to catch his breath. "As you're so fond of saying, 'welcome to the party.'"

"Good one," Dean quipped. "You're dying, I'll dig," he said, hopping into the hole and taking Chuck's shovel.

Chuck was more than glad to clamber out of the grave and lay on the grass, panting hard. "Maybe I'll write one of those creepy books Bobby has in his library. Maybe that's my thing."

"We rely on those creepy books to kill the creepy monsters," came Sam's voice from the hole. "It would be worthwhile work."

"That's what I'm gonna do," Chuck decided, sitting right there. "Sit at home, write a creepy book. That's pretty much what I do now, except it'll actually help someone."

Sam nodded. "Probably a better format than a hunter's journal, too." His shovel knocked a bone. "Wow, John didn't even bury her proper, just threw her in a hole."

"I thought Amelia killed John?" Chuck panted.

"We were wrong, how else would she get in this hole?" Dean covered quickly.

"Whatever, just burn her and drop me off at Bobby's," he wheezed back.

Dean quickly gathered the bones and burnt them in the hole, and they watched as the gasoline and rot-smelling fire burned. "We learned a lot more about angels in the last year or two then in the three thousand years previous. You could write an angel book; put that angel banishing sigil in it and everything."

Chuck stood up, and walked over to the fire. Dawn was breaking, and they could see it clearly over the flat western horizon. "I think I'll do that. I won't even have to interview anyone, because I watched your entire lives while you learned all that stuff."

Sam shook his head 'no.' "Still creepy, Chuck."

Chuck rolled his eyes. "Get over it."

"Lets crash at the motel," Sam sighed as they slammed the trunk shut on dawn. "I want to do a little research before heading out again."

"Geek boy, you're killing me," Dean mocked as he rounded the car. "If he wants to do his research - "

"Winchesters, Chuck," Castiel commanded, appearing suddenly before them. His voice was stern, and if Dean didn't know better, a tiny bit panicked. "Raphael has come down to earth," he boomed. "You must -"

"Watch out for him," Raphael finished smoothly, landing with two angels flanking her. They were clad head to toe in impeccable suits, perfectly poised.

"Jesus," Chuck's heart was beating out of his chest. Of course, just when he decided he was going to take a bench seat.

Immediately, more angels appeared on Castiel's side, behind Team Free Will. They were clad in grey and light suits, contrasting against the black of Raphael's, and Dean considered making a quip about the symbolism.

"Don't make this a pissing match, Castiel," Raphael replied smoothly. "There is no use fighting."

"What, I should just let you take the Winchesters?" Castiel said sarcastically. Dean felt a moment of pride that Cas had learned how to use sarcasm.

Chuck looked at Raphael, and something inside him changed.

He felt huge emotions overcome him, regret, mourning, they filled him up and swept him away.

"Raphael," Chuck called, voice grave.

Dean, Sam, Castiel, and all the angels present looked at Chuck with confusion.

"Do you see what you've become?" He pleaded, walking forward.

His back was straight and tall, and for one crazy moment they all felt it was Chuck they should be afraid of.

"Who are you to chide me, little prophet?" Raphael mocked, almost laughing. "You see only what we allow you to see."

"You see only what _you_ want to see," Chuck corrected, coming to a standstill.

 _I never wanted this._

"Stop what you're doing, Raphael, please," He implored the archangel. His tone was sorrowful, and very old.

Who was Chuck Shurley?

Raphael openly laughed in his face. "Why? So that we can endlessly watch guard over the mud monkeys? Our time watching your sin has come to an end."

"That's the same way Lucifer thought, remember?" He continued to plead, hands out. "He, too, thought the mud monkeys were beneath him. How can you _all_ criticize him when you now think the same way?"

"I think I will smite you where you stand for that comment," Raphael said dangerously, raising her hand to snap.

Before she could complete the action, they (and the car) were now standing in the parking lot of Bobby Singer, furious wingbeats of three angels dropping them home and flying off.

"Bobby has excellent warding, you will be safe here," Castiel said, staring at Chuck unblinkingly. "Raphael does not know of it's location."

For a moment, everyone stood silently in the yard.

"Chuck," Sam asked uncertainly, "Are you an angel?"

Chuck was already blinking again, hard, face confused like before.

"Oh great, he's forgetting," Dean said, hands up. "Cas, you mentioned a while ago about 'examining his soul' or whatever. I no longer care about his consent, I'm worried about him being a loose nuke."

Castiel, instead, did nothing. "I get the impression acting without his consent would not be wise," he rumbled, "if he is willing to speak that way to an archangel."

Chuck looked up, rubbing his head. "What?"

"We don't know that," Dean pressed, tone uncertain. "He didn't actually do anything except send a ghost home; any old angel could do that.

"I get the feeling he's not any old angel from the way he spoke to Raphael," Sam continued, examining Chuck like a specimen.

"Hello, _I'm here_ ," Chuck said, waving his arms in front of the three tall men. "And I don't want an angel cavity search."

"Real people are dying, Chuck!" Dean snapped, throwing his arms out. "If you're an archangel, you could save them."

"There aren't any more archangels. Lucifer, Michael, Raphael, and Gabriel were the only ones," Castiel clarified. "Although there are many powerful Seraphs unaccounted for," he said, turning his eye back to Chuck.

"People are going to die anyways!" Chuck yelled back, angry. "Die today, die tomorrow, what does it matter?"

"I'm sick of this nihilist author _crap_ ," Dean snarled. "Yeah, boo hoo, the hunting life is taking something from you too now. Man up and deal with it."

"Dean," Sam murmured in warning, but Dean brushed him off.

"I've yelled at Lucifer, I think whoever Chuck turns out to be, I can stand yelling at him too," Dean barked at Sam.

Sam shrugged, and let Dean continue.

Privately, he agreed with Dean.

Chuck felt an old anger stir in him.

"I have 'dealt with it' for a very long time, Dean Winchester," Chuck said darkly. His voice dropped to a threatening pitch. "But you know well the feeling, the feeling when no matter what you do, humanity still insists on dying." Chuck's head was tilted at Dean. "What would you have me do?

Dean was technically looking down at Chuck, 5'7" and 130lbs., but suddenly Dean got the sense that he was the one being looked down on. The question hit home.

"I don't know, Chuck, I really don't," he grasped, voice rough. "But you can't just give up. We didn't give up, did we? And we stopped the apocalypse!"

"A very long time?" Sam had the presence of mind to question. Chuck wouldn't remember whatever it is he'd remembered long, so Sam thought it best not to waste the time.

Castiel said nothing, still peering at Chuck.

Chuck looked into Dean's eyes, anger rooting him to the ground. "Longer than you can comprehend."

"The amnesia?" Sam questioned, a little aggressively.

Dean admired Sam's determination, but didn't really care. He figured they would just have Cas angel cavity search him later.

"I don't want to remember it," he mumbled, now fully looking away from them, at the blue sky behind them. "I never wanted this." Suddenly Chuck wheeled back around, looked Dean square in the eye. "I have not given up," he bit, and then vanished instantly.

Nobody noticed that there weren't wingbeats.

"Uh," Dean said. "What?"

"He is in his bedroom," Castiel said, looking to the house.

"Did he jog your memory?" Sam queried Castiel. "Remind you of any angels you used to know?"

Castiel shook his head. "Unfortunately not. I have only what both of you have. That he seems very old, and very sad. Sadder than any of my brethren."

"Your brethren tend to be dicks with wings," Dean growled. Castiel looked hurt, just barely, so Dean said "I'm sorry. You're not a dick."

Sam didn't miss the way Castiel's gaze turned to Dean, surprised.

"Lets go do that soul examination," Sam changed the topic. "He's probably forgotten what the hell happened by now, that seems to be the pattern."

Sure enough, at that moment, Chuck burst through the door. "It happened again! One moment Raphael was about to tear us apart, and the next I'm back here, and you all are too? I can see that Castiel probably brought us here, but…" he trailed off.

"Cas's going to do the angel cavity search, no longer optional," Dean commanded, almost regretfully.

"I feel bad about this, Dean," Sam said remorsefully. "He's been -"

"Happy," Chuck filled in quietly. "I've been happy here."

He straightened up, and something seemed to settle in him. "There's no need for the cavity search," his voice strengthened. "I've been running away from whatever is 'inside me,' or whatever, but it's time to stop running."

The crowd looked confused. "So?"

"Some good old fashioned hypnosis," Bobby said, walking into the yard with them, finally realizing they were there. "Like we were gonna do in the first place. I overheard the conversation, felt the wards shift when Castiel and his friends flew you all in here. I'll call someone."

"Don't you have a bad reputation after burning Pamela's eyes out?" Dean quipped, tone way too casual for the subject matter.

Bobby shrugged. "If no one bites, I can ghetto up some hypnosis on my own. I just don't like to do it, since people don't find me relaxing, and _I_ don't find _them_ appealing."

"I would rather you did," Chuck offered. Something inspired him to say "You're a good man, Bobby Singer."

Bobby looked at him strangely, and just nodded. "Easier then, I guess."

"All right, just like with Pamela," Bobby repeated for the boys' benefit. "We're all going to stand here and watch the very exciting business of me putting Chuck to sleep, and asking you questions. You have to work with me, or this will be unpleasant for everyone."

Chuck was sitting on the bed of the panic room, with three dozen types of wards painted around him. It didn't make him feel any better.

"Lay down," Bobby instructed.

Suddenly, Chuck had a sense of everything coming to an end.

"I'm a little scared," he admitted, hands shaking against the bed. "I buried this all for a reason. What if we're doing the wrong thing?"

"We can always magic up some amnesia again," Dean assured him. "Or Bobby can just tell you not to remember it, or something."

Chuck sighed. "Well, Thank you for showing me more there's something more than alcoholism and self-loathing," he found himself saying. "My whole life has been marked by my own general failure to do good in this world. But Sam and Dean, you showed me how to stand up and do the right thing."

He sighed, stretching his neck. "And that's why I'm doing this," he said, laying down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw their affected expressions.

"You're family, Chuck," Dean found himself saying. "I don't know what comes next, but you've stood up against both archangels and demons for us, _then_ let us rip you out of your home and make you a hunter. And now here you are, doing something that might kill you because it might help people you've never met." He summoned a sideways grin. "Ain't nothing more Winchester than that."

"Family," Sam repeated.

"Family, Bobby repeated.

Castiel looked around, and they looked to him.

"You have to accept him too, Cas," Dean prompted

Castiel smiled back "Family."

Chuck sighed, and the tremors in his hands stopped.

"I'm going to count down from ten, and as I count, let go," Bobby murmured, voice lower than before.

They felt it too, the weight of innocence leaving. The weight of something coming.

Chuck felt himself dissolving as the numbers counted back, and he let himself drift away.

"3, 2, 1," Bobby's voice finished.

Chuck was as still as death on the bed, and Bobby lit his incense and candles around them.

"Who are you?" Bobby's voice said, unusually gentle.

Dean could never quite picture it before, but suddenly he saw Bobby and a wife, loving and happy together once before. Bobby hated to take anyone's innocence the way a demon took his.

"Chuck Shurley," was his plain reply.

"Who were you before that?"

Chuck's face pinched. "It doesn't matter."

"Who were you before you were Chuck Shurley?"

"So old," he replied again. Something distinctly upset etched it's way onto his facial expression.

"How old were you?"

"As old as time itself."

Sam leaned over to Castiel, and whispered "Cas… are you as old as time itself?"

Castiel whispered "Not so nearly. I approach my four millionth year."

That alone would have been enough to send them reeling. Sometimes it slipped their mind that Castiel was an ancient being. But something more ancient laid on the bed, being hypnotized by Bobby.

"Are you human?" Bobby asked, pulling himself together.

"Yes," he replied, "Fully human." Given that he just said he was as old as time itself, that answer was less than illuminating.

"What is your name? Not Chuck Shurley, your real name." Bobby leaned forward in his chair, and everyone else unconsciously gathered around.

"I left my post," the reply was whispered, laced with remorse. "To take my name would be to take it up again."

"Remember what you said," Dean interjected heavily. "That it was the right thing to do?" His voice was hopeful, uncertain.

"I have often thought the right thing to do would be to wipe the slate clean and try again," came his reply.

 _What the fuck_ , Dean mouthed at Sam.

Sam looked back, eyes extremely wide, shaking his head.

Bobby's own eyes widened, and he swallowed.

"If the right thing to do is to end our suffering, then let it be so," said Castiel firmly. The three looked at him, but he stood unashamed of his words.

 _Is he God?_ Dean mouthed at Castiel, pointing frantically.

Castiel said nothing as he peered back at Dean.

"Do you want to wake up and remember?" Bobby asked, carefully.

His voice was low and sure. "No."

"When will you return?" Castiel asked again.

He pulled in a heaving sigh. "When I am ready."

Castiel didn't look like that was a helpful answer, but he stood all the same.

"Are you Chuck?" Dean asked as well, interrupting Bobby. "Is Chuck a lie?"

Chuck didn't say anything, and laid there silently on the cot.

Bobby shook his head, throwing Dean a withering look. "Is your appearance as Chuck Shurley an act?"

His answer was weirdly prompt and emphatic. "No, no, no. I am Chuck Shurley."

Sam put his head in his hands.

Chuck was _God_ , and _God_ was a self-hating writer.

Bobby's voice wavered a little.

"I will count forwards. When you reach ten, you will wake up and remember nothing of this conversation. 1, 2, 3…"

As Bobby counted, Chuck got more and more agitated. "…8, 9, 10."

Chuck sat up, looking around wildly. "What happened?" Were the first words out of his mouth.

The second was a groan, as he brought his hand up to his head. "Did someone hit me with a lead pipe?"

"Get out," Bobby said, a little shakily. "We'll fill you in, just get out."

Chuck looked at them all strangely, then flinched suddenly from a wave of pain. "I'm going to go take opiates," he said as he stumbled up the stairs. The door clicked shut, and Castiel shut the panic door for good measure.

The moment the door closed, Dean rounded on the group. "Is Chuck God?" he hissed.

"I am certain of it," Castiel said, shaken.

"What, did he fall?" Sam exclaimed, hissing quietly, incredulous.

"And become a train wreck alcoholic writer?" Dean threw his hands up. "The guy must have some real problems."

"I just hypnotized God and asked him a bunch of invasive questions," Bobby whispered, hands shaking. "He could have smote me for asking his name."

"Anyone who falls has some real problems," Castiel chose to answer Dean. "But I admit, this is not what I expected."

Dean kept making confused movements. "I'm a little happy, though, in a fucked up way. This means God isn't captain of the dick-angel army."

"Small comfort, because abandoning us and falling doesn't make me think too highly of his character," Bobby said quietly, still shaken up.

"But think about what he fell to," Sam defended. "To horribly abusive guardians, to literally no parents? His whole life spent trying to save everyone else in the same shitty situation? What does _that_ say about him?"

The group was silent for a moment.

"As Dean would say, this is above my pay grade," Castiel intoned.

"So, fine, God wants to be a weird supernatural researcher." A groan escaped Dean's lips. "This can't be happening."

"He's secretly the creator of everything, so I bet he'll be a surprisingly good researcher. Just gotta jog his memory the right way and we'll know how to kill anything," Sam started rambling with just a touch of desperation.

Dean glared at Bobby. "Don't you think he like, _owes_ the world? _Owes_ the world more than a research job?"

Castiel then rounded on Dean. "What do you propose? That we go lecture him?"

"I don't know. This is fucked," Dean emphasized. "Okay, look, we don't even know if he's God, we just know he _thinks_ he's God."

"Loathe as I am to admit it, Dean, it makes sense," Castiel said. "Knowledge of anything he chooses, memory loss, strange powers, yet completely and utterly human. This was how Jesus appeared to humans some two thousand years ago, with memory intact."

"Chuck is Jesus," Dean said, again.

"There's gotta be some sort of biblical test," Sam said. "He left instructions."

Bobby shrugged. "Nothing we can use."

The four of them stood in silence.

"So… we're just gonna keep God-Chuck on research duty until he 'decides it's time?'" Dean said derisively.

Castiel cocked his head. "This whole experience for Chuck has been… constructive. Who is to say he is not seeking some sort of growth, or healing?"

"The guy's been gone since time began, and you're trying to help him?" Dean snapped. "You, of all people, should be looking for answers!"

Sam cut in. "Okay, you know what? Ten minutes ago we were saying Chuck is family. And you heard him, he's still Chuck. Clearly he's having some issue, or has some awful memory or I don't know what. But he's family, and you don't kick family out because they have some sort of awful past."

"Not even if that awful past involves fucking you?" Dean almost spat.

"You've met Chuck!" Sam defended. "Do you think he would want to hurt anyone? He was a _vegan_ , for God's sake. We're just humans, Dean, there's probably something we don't know at play here."

Bobby rumbled "I hate to say it, Dean, but Sam's right. At least," he condescended, "don't shout at him the moment we go upstairs."

Dean sighed, anger seeping away. "Remember that awful convention Becky lured us to? And those two guys?"

Sam grimaced. "If only I could forget."

"They said the supernatural story was about family and love, and in their words, "who wouldn't want to live that?" So," He heaved a sigh, "It's _Chuck_ , he's family, he says he needs some magic amnesia and to be shown the good in the world or whatever, _fine_. Hunting is a crap place to find the good in the world, but here we are."

With that, Dean threw the door to the panic room open and stalked out. "He better have some fucking answers when this is all over."


	5. Chapter 5

**You may notice that all of them are pretty much always drinking. They don't show it as much on the show, since on the show they're usually actively hunting, but they reference the fact that when not actively on the hunt they're pretty much always tipsy.**

Dean shoved past Chuck, who appeared to be eagerly waiting by the stairs.

"Did I do something?" Chuck asked, looking after him. Chuck didn't miss the way that Sam and Bobby eyed him warily, and that Castiel was downright staring.

"You said some stuff, it'll take some getting used to," Sam supplied, the least rattled of them all. "Just ignore him."

Chuck narrowed his eyes. "Do I get to know this stuff I said?"

Bobby frowned and shook his head. "No. You didn't want us to tell… you," he finished lamely.

Chuck laughed a little. "Not gonna lie, that's a relief. So will I ever find out?"

"You gave no indication as to when you would become aware of your true nature," Castiel offered.

He raised his eyebrows. "Are you sure this guy was me? Because that doesn't sound like me."

When Sam cracked up, Chuck didn't even bother asking why.

"What's your deal?" Dean accused Castiel. "I thought you hated God, the guy wouldn't show when you went looking for him."

"Chuck is…" Castiel nodded his head. "Honestly, Chuck is sort of pathetic. _Was_ pathetic. It is as Sam said; if this is the life God chose for himself, there's probably something we don't know."

Dean frowned. "You seem awfully forgiving."

Castiel frowned. "I am not a human, Dean. I know little of what it means to be one. But…" he looked to the sunset. "It seems full of suffering and struggle. My fear was that our father had abandoned us all for a better existence. But, he is actually struggling and suffering with us. I'm not going to pretend to understand, but I recognize that that isn't abandonment."

"But - " Dean huffed, crossing his arms. "It's just fucking wallowing. It's not actually fixing anything, is it? It's just him crying and wallowing. It's the same old shitty wallowing Chuck, just on a way bigger scale than we pictured."

"You need to see this from a different perspective," Castiel said. "Your life is not the entirety of life. Your lives are brief, just eighty years, and then you live out eternity elsewhere. Yet, you are all so concerned with the quality of your life, and not the quality of your afterlife. Perhaps there is something you don't know."

"Heaven sucks," Dean says. "You're completely isolated from people you love. There is no happy afterlife."

"God didn't choose the apocalypse. Maybe there are other things he didn't choose."

"Why are you giving the man a chance?!" Dean exclaimed. "You keep fucking defending him!"

"What are my other options, _Dean_?" Castiel pressed. "Watch him suffer, and believe that he has given up on us?"

"I've had a father give up on me, you get over it," Dean spat.

Castiel was gone in an instant.

In the next, Dean rubbed his face, guilt uncomfortable in his chest.

"So do I get to go home?" Chuck asked, more than a little curious. It wasn't that he wanted to go home, per se. He hadn't even thought about going home in the last few weeks. It's just that being hypnotized was supposed to be 'the big reveal,' and nothing happened.

"We're demoting you, research duty," Bobby huffed. "It's a damn shame because you're a crack shot, but if you're gonna get all weird and go amnesia on us, you're too unstable for the field. But…

Chuck smiled wanly. "If you'll have me, I'd like to stay here. Plus," he waved his arm around, "all the cool books are here."

Bobby's beady eye turned on the man. It would be good to keep an eye on amnesiac-God.

And Bobby wouldn't admit this before, definitely wouldn't now, but he was enjoying having Chuck for company.

"Fine," he huffed.

Chuck smiled, seeing straight through Bobby. "I'll put the house up for sale."

Castiel flew him back to his house, for-sale sign in tow. It wasn't lost on Chuck, the way Castiel was very eager to spend time with him now. It's not like Castiel avoided him before, but he didn't know the man - angel, all that well. He spent most of his time during the apocalypse with the Winchesters, and most of his time since in heaven.

The state of the house, frankly, embarrasses Chuck. How did he not notice before, the rank smell of alcoholism and depression that permeated his old home?

"This is nasty," Chuck said as he walked through the door.

"They are rather poor conditions," Castiel agreed. "But most prophets live in worse."

Chuck rolled his eyes. "You're all being tight-lipped, but I'm not a moron. I'm no prophet."

Castiel looked at him, looked back at the dank house, and sighed. "You are not."

Chuck looked around, at all his old furniture, the couch he'd had since his first apartment, the shitty tube tv in the corner, and that awful sad desktop computer he still used. He hadn't missed any of it; every keepsake or knickknack he treasured, he'd taken with him when they picked him up.

"I'll just donate all this shit, make it easy," Chuck waved his hand. "The Goodwill can sort through all of it themselves."

Castiel nodded. He turned his head and in an instant, every rag or item too dirty to donate was gone.

Chuck started. "What? What did you do?"

"They are now at the curb. It is my understanding that is where humans in this society put their discarded items," Castiel supplied.

Chuck walked over to the door, and sure enough, everything was in a loose, random pile at the curb. The trash guys hated it when you put loose items out.

Well, screw the trash guys.

"I'll just call those donation pick-up people and leave the house open," he said for his own benefit. He picked up the sign and walked out to the yard, and stuck it into the ground.

He looked around; none of his neighbor acquaintances were out. He supposed it was a good thing; he was off to a new life, and they weren't coming along.

The house must have cleaned up well, because it was sold within the month. Not for a ton of money, only $60,000, but it was a shitty house in an okay neighborhood, and that was a good price for the area.

"I don't want to just put this in a bank," admitted Chuck. "We'll just piss it away."

"Invest it," Bobby suggested. "Nothing fancy, I've got some money in a 401k. Just in case I do manage to make it past an age where I can work on cars. Plus, houses in the boonies are cheap and you have access to angel-air."

"However, I am not handy to fly him to the grocery store whenever he needs," Castiel intoned, almost grumbling. "And is this not moot?"

"Why?" Chuck asked, looking at the computer screen revealing his bank account. _$60,000_.

"It's, uh, something you said while you were under," Sam admitted. "Sort of implied that you wouldn't make it to retirement with your ignorance intact."

"Yeah, I sort of had that feeling," Chuck replied, still staring at that gigantic sum of money. "What with all the shit going on."

"The 'shit' is actually coming to an end," Castiel interrupted. "The battles with Raphael are coming to their close, I sense the end of the conflict drawing near."

Chuck laughed - "What are the odds I'm going to do something and amazing and forget what it was?" he quipped. His tone turned sour. "Oh wait, one hundred percent."

Sam just gave him half a smile that said, _I'm sorry_.

"So you're just gonna leave it to me to figure it all out?" He asked, a little bitter.

Bobby looked up at him. "You're the one who said back off. If you ask, we'll answer."

Chuck opened his mouth to ask, but as he formed the words - _Who Am I?_ \- They stuck in his throat.

"Yeah, I thought so," Dean mumbled sourly.

"We must eliminate the threat of Raphael," Castiel insisted, "And Crowley has yet to return my summons, which I take to mean that he has no way to help. There is, however, one other option," he continued uncertainly. "He can be confined to the jail cells of heaven. They are more secure than the bowels of the pit, but not than the cage, for that was made by God himself. They have held many angels for thousands of years -"

"- But you don't know if they can hold an archangel," Bobby interrupted, seeing the problem.

Castiel nodded. "It would be more secure to kill him."

"We can't kill him," Chuck insisted, oddly vehement. Of course, the rest of the group knew why. "He's the _last_ archangel. Michael is probably like Lucifer by now. Wouldn't it be a shame to kill him?"

"Raphael is corrupted, just as Michael and Lucifer are," Castiel insisted. "They all believe as Lucifer does now. There is no difference."

Chuck pursed his lips. "You're right, you're right. It just seems a little sad, you know? That all the archangels are either evil or dead."

There was a pause.

"It saddens me greatly," Castiel admitted, "but that doesn't change the situation any."

"So, killing Raphael, what do we do?" Dean asked, moving the conversation along. "Archangels can only be killed by the archangel's blade, correct? Where do we get one of those?"

"I know not where Gabriel's blade ended up after his death," Castiel intoned. "There are other weapons that can kill an archangel, but they are lost."

"Seems like the sort of thing Balthazaar would have stolen, yeah?" Sam said with irritation. "It just keeps coming around to that guy."

"We searched, and we can't find anything that would summon an angel, or compel them to show up," Bobby added.

"If such a thing exists, angels would surely want to destroy all knowledge of it," Castiel replied dryly.

"All these rituals, summonings, this and that," Chuck said. "Why would God even make them, unless he knew there might be a situation where they were needed? Because God himself wouldn't need them, right? He would just" Chuck snapped his fingers, "make it happen."

Bobby shrugged. "Makes sense," he said, eyeing the brothers significantly. "You'd better hope so, too, or else we're up shit creek."

Chuck huffed, opening his laptop to work. They all stared at him silently. "I'm new, am I gonna get any help?" Chuck joked.

Sam rolled his eyes, and pulled a book from the shelf.

"Chuck can take my spot, I'm not doing this shit," Dean complained. "I'll be in the yard."

"We don't need the money anymore, Dean," came Bobby's smartass reply.

Dean yelled back from the backyard. "Yeah, but it's a hell of a lot better than research!"

A couple more weeks of research, and Dean was going stir crazy. Nothing exciting happened with Chuck, nothing exciting happened with Raphael, and every broken car in the yard was fixed by now.

"Okay, look, this hunt is thirty seconds away," whined Dean, pointing to a newspaper clipping. "Can Sam and I go hunt?" They'd been there for two months now, and Dean couldn't remember a time they'd stayed in one place longer than that since they were children.

"Go, git," Bobby grumbled when he brought his whining to him. "Chuck and I can handle book duty." It had been weeks, and nothing turned up about a summoning ritual. They'd tried looking for signs of the angel, but angels didn't have omens the same way major hitter demons did.

Sam and Dean left, drove off to somewhere in the country to go fight a monster, so it was that Bobby and Chuck were alone in his living room, pouring over books that gave no answers.

"What do we do when there are no leads, Bobby?" Chuck asked tiredly. "We've read every single book in your library, there isn't anything."

"The great thing is, kid, once you find info, you don't ever have to find it again," Bobby huffed. "As for what we do when there are no leads… those fool boys go hunt until they find one."

Chuck hummed, and was silent a little more. "And until then, we cast around in the dark," he grumbled.

A little while later, "Should I be scared, Bobby?" came Chuck's voice.

Bobby was startled from his thoughts. "What?"

"I mean, ever since you guys hypnotized me, or whatever, you've been acting really weird," he explained. "I mean, you were being weird before, which is fine. I was being weird." Chuck took his glasses off and rubbed his eyes. "But ever since then, sometimes you guys tiptoe around me or act like I'm gonna snap at any moment."

Bobby looked up at Chuck from under his eyebrows. "Well, we don't want to jog your memory. Those aren't happy things, the things you don't remember."

Chuck put down the thing he was reading, and sighed. "Should I be worried about what it is?"

Bobby shook his head. "Nah. No use in being worried. 'Sides, it'll come when it does."

"It's hard for me to take that attitude," said Chuck, a little recalcitrant. "This is the first time I've had anything resembling a family, and for less than six months, and I'm being asked to give it all up again?"

"There's nothing saying remembering will mean giving up this up, boy," Bobby admonished. "Don't go assuming things, that always got Sam and Dean into trouble."

Chuck put his hands on the table. "I mean, I had Becky," he continued, "But she was never that close a girlfriend, you know? She only was into me because she loved the books. She was too good for me anyways," Chuck mumbled.

"Typically when a girl is too good for you you don't let her go," came Bobby's questioning tone. And from what little Sam had told him about superfan #1, she was _not_ a catch.

"No, I mean, she was too innocent," he explained. "She had such hope for the world. We always got in little stupid fights because I was too jaded for her." Chuck snorted. "She was also annoying as shit sometimes."

Bobby shrugged. "Most of the civvies are like that. That's why hunters don't settle down."

"I never really cared, anyways," admitted Chuck. "Never really was that interested. I know you had a wife, Bobby, I saw the rising of the witnesses. What's your story?"

Bobby shook his head. "If you know the rising of the witnesses, you know the story. Was married young… she was perfect. But a demon possessed her, and…" he sighed. "She didn't make it."

Bobby looked up to see Chuck's pitying eyes, and was repulsed.

"Oh stop it with that crybaby shit," Bobby grumbled. "That's my story, not yours."

"No, I mean," Chuck insisted, looking away. "It's horrible, _really_."

"I'm aware," Bobby growled.

"This is what I hate about humanity," came his suddenly irritated reply. "That these things have to happen."

Bobby wondered how much of his opinion was Chuck's, and how much was God's. Bobby also wondered if there was any meaningful distinction.

"I've had one too many angsty conversations about all the evil in the world for my lifetime," is what Bobby decided to say. "So if we could just _not_ , that would be great, thanks."

Chuck put his glasses back on. "I know, but sometimes I just can't suppress the urge, you know?"

Yeah, Bobby did know the feeling. He leaned back down into the books, and the conversation was over.

Sam and Dean stayed gone for a while, one hunt leading on to the next in the way that these things do. They called Bobby every week or so, asked how Chuck was doing, asked how the research was going.

Occasionally, Chuck had an exciting new spell to share with them or a couple of questions to ask about angels, but mostly he just alternated his time reading up about angels, writing about angels in the compendium he was working on, or doing chores around Bobby's house.

Hunters would drop in, or phone, and Bobby always introduced him as 'Chuck, a new hunter.' They'd ask Bobby to research things, Bobby would turn to Chuck, and Chuck would give some sort of put upon sigh as he wrote down what they wanted to know.

On this day, Chuck was doing the dishes. "Bobby, are you ever going to tell me to get my own place?" he asked curiously.

To his surprise, Bobby shrugged. "I was gonna," he rumbled, "Lived alone for fifteen years, wasn't gonna stop anytime soon. What's worse is you're a young man, and young men annoy the shit out of me," a chuckle escaped his lips. "You've seen those two. But you're surprisingly good company. You always do the chores I hate, you'll drink with me if I want, and you fuck off when I want." He shrugged.

Bobby calculated his next statement. "Most of the time, you act more like a sorry old man than you do someone in his mid-twenties." Bobby had taken to speaking to Chuck the way he would speak to Rufus or another cranky old hunter, not like someone his age.

He didn't expect the laughter that erupted from Chuck. "You have no idea how many people have told me that," he joked, tone just a tad heavy. "When you're a kid, they say 'he carries the weight on his shoulders,' all sad and soft, but when you're an adult they just snap and say 'lighten up,' like Dean does."

"Well, that doesn't change," he smiled grimly. "That kid's such an asshole. But no, Chuck, I'm not going to tell you to get out anytime soon."

Chuck smiled, knowing, and kept right on doing the dishes.


	6. Chapter 6

Sam and Dean next came back in the fall, about a month and a half or two months later. They didn't have a lead on Balthazaar or Raphael, but Bobby demanded that they come back for Thanksgiving and have it proper, like a family. So, they showed up on the doorstep in the middle of the night, while Chuck was passed out upstairs.

"Boys," Bobby grumbled, opening the door to let them in. "It's 3 am you know."

"Hey Bobby," Sam whispered, giving the man a one arm hug, then dropping his duffel in the hallway to go through the fridge.

"It's always one of you," he grumbled good-naturedly.

"How's Chuck?" Dean asked, looking around.

Bobby pointed upstairs. "Passed out."

"Any change?" Sam asked, still bent over the fridge.

Bobby shrugged. "Nope."

Sam continued,"But… You realize that we have _God_ sleeping in the spare room upstairs?" he said in a hushed tone.

"I'd like to be sleeping in a room upstairs," Dean whined as he dropped his duffel in the hall. "Yeah, old news, Bobby."

Bobby hadn't gotten a chance to talk to them on the phone alone in a while, and the thoughts were itching at him. "He's got a point," he insisted. "We gotta be asking ourselves, what's he gonna do when he realizes? What if he accidentally uses whatever power he has, without knowing? And…"

He sighed. "I don't know if I mentioned this, but sometimes he gives me the jeebs. Some of the things he says, you know?"

"I know," whispered Sam. "I've been worrying about it too, believe me, but what the fuck are we supposed to do? He wants this, and he's _God_."

"I don't give a shit what God wants," Dean mumbled, less quietly. "He took my _childhood_ away from me, I'm not letting him take this night of sleep." He pounded up the stairs more loudly than necessary, and slammed the door.

"What's his problem?" Bobby commented, pointing to Dean as he walked up.

"He's in a bad mood and he's an asshole, what do you want," Sam offered, grabbing a beer. "Why are you up, anyway?"

Bobby raised his eyebrows. "Worrying about this. And Raphael trying to wind up the end of the world again."

Sam shook his head. "We'll figure out something Bobby, we always do. Hey, maybe Chuck will remember and fix it for us. It would be nice to actually have God on our side for once."

The noise woke Chuck, who noticed his bladder was uncomfortably full. He ambled to the bathroom, and relieved himself gladly.

But as he left the upstairs bathroom to go back to bed, voices drifted into his awareness.

"He's a loose nuke…" came Bobby's voice.

Chuck wasn't going to eavesdrop, he _wasn't_ , until he heard Sam's reply at the top of the stairs.

"But it's Chuck, Bobby. He doesn't even know."

Doesn't know what?

"He's gonna…" Bobby's voice became too hushed for Chuck to make out, but he could pick out particular words. "God," "don't know how he feels about this," and "all gotta come out sometime."

Hushed voices in the middle of the night was an odd time to have a theological conversation.

"Chuck might be God, Sam, but is God Chuck?"

 _What?_ Chuck thought to himself. _What the hell are they talking about_?

"Of course he is," was Sam's reply. Their voices were getting louder. "You've seen the way he talks. He says something deep, gets that awful expression like he's a million years old, and then he just doesn't notice he said anything unusual."

"That might just be the tortured writer talking," Bobby warned.

 _They think I'm God_.

The thought sounded hilarious. Yeah, alcoholic Chuck Shurley was secretly God.

Ha ha.

So he kept listening.

Sam snorted. "Bobby, if I had to guess what kind of person God was, I'd answer tortured writer."

But then again, what did he know? Fallen angels didn't know they were angels. But Chuck sincerely doubted that God was the sort of guy who would fall. Or maybe he was?

Could God even actually fall?

This whole line of thinking was preposterous.

But as he looked at the two men bickering at the bottom the stairs, the less preposterous it seemed.

 _This is so arrogant_ , he thought to himself. _You're going to hell just for thinking this_.

 _You're going to hell anyways_ , his self-loathing side replied.

So he looked at the men at the bottom of the stairs, and wondered what to do next.

Would he _actually_ entertain this line of thought?

At that moment, something tugged at his awareness, something that seemed like it had always been there, but he'd always ignored it.

Chuck considered resisting, but knew it all was going to come out sometime.

As soon as he let go, he felt himself fill with power, golden and _hot_ pouring out of the air right in front of him and into his bones. The world exploded into new colors, sights and sounds that he'd never experienced before. They were hot, and new, and he swore that he could see every atom.

The vision was gone as soon as it came though, and Chuck was left on the stair step feeling dumfounded.

He could still hear them talking at the bottom of the stairs, so as quietly as possible he padded back to his room.

That night, the nightmares Chuck hadn't had since he was a child returned.

He didn't understand what he was seeing; the lights were bright, the motion confusing. He heard voices, musical voices that screamed on all sides. The colors were blinding, a kalidescope, the rainbow itself exploding as they crashed into each other, inconceivable.

And there in the center, something bright and terrible was falling, falling into the inky blackness. The thing was _roaring_ , the blackness was _screaming,_ the pit too dark to look into for long.

It was _his_ fault it was falling. He pushed him, threw him in.

He didn't have a body, he didn't think, but the thing was looking up at him with piercing white eyes. Or were they red? There was rage and pain there, and betrayal. They loved each other.

A step back, and it was on the edge of the pit.

"How could you do this to me?!" It shouted. Lucifer.

He felt the decision in his chest, he blew Lucifer back, Lucifer fell. He watched him fall, watched him until he could see him no more. The colors were still exploding around him, a kaleidescope, but he didn't care.

The pain in his chest was unbearable, and he didn't want to live with it anymore.

Suddenly Chuck was sitting up, aware that he was making noise. Shouting, quietly shouting would have been more accurate, and just like in his childhood there were tears streaming down his face.

"Chuck," Sam's frantic voice was saying. The three humans were standing in his room, clad in their boxers and flannel. "You were screaming… yelling… Lucifer."

Chuck blinked tiredly at them. It felt like he'd been rolled over by a truck, his muscles uncooperative and eyes unable to open.

He peeled his eyes open, focused on the men crowded around the door.

Immediately, Chuck snapped. "What the hell! Get out!"

"What?" was Dean's nonplussed reply.

Chuck was flipping the blanket open, already on his feet. "Get out!"

"Jesus, fine dude, you just didn't sound happy!" Sam bitched, face irritated in an instant. "You wanna suffer through nightmares, be my guest." He stalked out without a backward glance, and the others quickly followed.

Chuck looked at the closed door. He scowled, and pinched the bridge of his nose. He shouldn't have yelled, they were trying to help, doing the right thing. He opened the door and sighed.

"Look, sorry guys," Chuck said, still pinching his nose. "I just don't want the third degree."

"What do you want us to do, then?" Bobby asked, eyebrow raised and all.

Chuck groaned. "I know, I probably woke _all_ of you up and you all happened to come running or whatever, but don't do that. Take turns, leave me alone, I don't know, just…"

Dean laughed. "Bobby's obnoxious nightmares tapered off mostly before we knew him, and whenever it's Sam or I it's the obvious job of the other one, you know." He trailed off at the end, unused to showing such concern.

 _He says that like this is part of the job_ , he thought tiredly.

"And Castiel doesn't sleep," Chuck supplied.

Chuck rubbed his face. _I'm… god. And they know. And I know. But they don't know I know_.

 _Fuck this._

"I'm going back to bed," he declared, closing the door on them.

But as he laid down on the bed, he found he couldn't relax. After feeling what must have been his god-grace, or whatever, he couldn't stop thinking about it. He could tell it was still there, just out of reach, just one fright or one nightmare away. That's probably what the blackouts have been, all this time, memories that leaked through.

He was curious, deadly curious, and wanted to use the power again. But the power was heavy, and thick, and with it came an impenetrable darkness. Chuck had felt the feeling of thick and crushing depression before, but this was something else. Chuck didn't remember a lot about being god, but he remembered why he'd forgotten.

He'd told The Darkness "Can't you feel it? It needed to be born," as he clenched his fist and formed the world. He created everything and it had it's purpose, but it was always there. And he'd created it, he'd followed the first instinct he'd ever had and created. What power the creation was, the archangels were furious and stalwart, and the chilling thought occurred to him that if they rose up against him they could end him. Well, all children outgrew their parents.

But the instinct was unsatisfied, and after an immeasurable amount of time, he'd realized his mistake. His children were like him, just and powerful, but they weren't him, couldn't love and forgive. So as he breathed out, he breathed with it the good things of love and loss, pleasure and pain, and this intricate material world, complete with humanity, became.

Like any artist, he wouldn't say that he came up with it. No, the creation was there, waiting to be revealed.

But then it turned dark, and sour, and he couldn't stop it; it was poison, the love all turned to hate and the pleasure gave way to pain. His children suffered, oh how they suffered, and with all his power and all his knowledge the one thing he couldn't overcome, would never take away from them, was their choices.

How dare they ask him to take it away? It was in their very nature, they begged him to rip out their souls and destroy them, they called him evil and sent him away when he refused. In the _midst_ of their sin, they blamed _him_ for their suffering.

The next few days were littered with unbearable nightmares. When he came down the stairs, and everyone was wearing their pity face again, it was too much.

"No," Chuck snapped, before anyone opened their mouths. "Just, no. Shove your pity up your ass."

Dean's eyebrows climbed into his hairline. "Wow, Chuck, I've never heard you speak like that before, honestly," a smile and a small laugh was torn from his lips.

"I spent most of my childhood as the recipient of pity," he bitched. "I've seen the pity face more times than I can count. Enough."

Sam, the least pitying of everyone, leaned back in his chair. "Fine by me, I hate doing the dance anyways. Like you're expected to do certain things, or feel a certain way because _they_ feel a certain way -"

"It's all crap," Chuck agreed.

"Where was this guy when we came crashing through your door three years ago?" joked Dean.

"You scared the shit out of me, you know," Chuck informed them. "Not just because you're scary, but you are my characters come to life. It rattled me."

"Enough that you didn't talk to us like we were normal human beings until at least a clear year later."

Chuck frowned. "You try having your characters come to life, see how you feel."


	7. Chapter 7

Chuck came back in with the groceries to find everyone, even Castiel, standing in the kitchen like they were waiting on him.

"What?" he asked. "Cas is here, so it means something."

Dean rolled his eyes as Sam said "We're having an intervention."

Chuck dropped the groceries on the floor. He knew exactly what this was about. Finding out that he is actually god and actually abandoned everyone had drove him deeper into nightmares, and deeper into the bottle.

"You're drinking like a fish, like even for us like a fish, screaming so loud every night the house rattles, and you spend all day skulking in the yard," he finished. "What's happening."

Chuck frowned and put away the groceries. "It's not a big deal, all right? Raphael's just weighing on all of us."

"What do you even have to have nightmares about?" Dean frowned.

Chuck raised his eyebrows. "What, Cas _exploding_ on me not enough for you?"

Dean raised his hands in surrender, successfully chided.

"Just tell us, Chuck," Sam said. "I mean, _you_ wrote the book on it, you know how lying always gets us in trouble."

Chuck looked up at the ceiling. He didn't want to lie to them, but this isn't something he wanted to share with them, not right now. He barely remembered who he even was.

"Fine," he said, glowering and wheeling around to look at them. "Something's up. But I'm not talking about it."

Dean frowned again. "Is it about, you know, who you are?" he said vaguely.

Chuck continued to put groceries away. "I don't know what you're talking about," he ground out.

Bobby snorted. "Now that's a lie if I've ever heard one."

Chuck wheeled around again. "What do you want from me?"

No one said anything.

"I thought so," he spat, and stormed outside.

Chuck was seething. For god's sake, (he supposed he shouldn't say that anymore), all he wanted was to be left alone. Literally, all he'd ever wanted, since the god forsaken beginning of fucking time, was to be left alone.

In his chest, he felt something squirm. That wasn't true. That's what he wanted for a long time, but before then, there was something else he wanted.

He kicked a rock in the field in frustration. Whatever impenetrable darkness made god _himself_ fall, he didn't want to be a part of it.

But it didn't care if he wanted to be a part of it. The darkness was in him now, a sea of anger so vast he was sure he would drown.

Now that he knew about the power, he couldn't get it out of his head. He could see everything, and knew he could crush it all with just a thought. He was so angry he thought he might like to; crush it all, and just try again next universe, with his sister at the helm and him in the cage instead.

The sea of anger was anger with himself.

And then he heard footfall behind him.

"Chuck!" Dean called.

"Leave me alone!" Chuck yelled without turning around.

"Maybe you should - " Castiel said from the distance.

Dean ignored him. "Chuck!"

"I swear, Dean Winchester," Chuck said, "If you have an ounce of self preservation, _leave me alone_."

Dean had almost caught up to Chuck. "Well, I don't have that," he called.

Chuck turned around, and with a sweeping motion, Dean was thrown backward fifteen feet.

"I just want to help!" Dean called, getting back on his feet.

Chuck scoffed. "I thought you thought god's a dick."

Dean shrugged. "Not anymore. I don't know much, but I know that anyone with nightmares like that isn't the bad guy."

Chuck crossed his arms, shifting his weight to one leg.

"I also know you just like force-threw me, but you only threw me ten feet, and I landed so gently it felt like landing on a mattress. That isn't exactly what the bad guys do."

"What do you want, Dean."

"Like I said, to help. Look, I know you're god -" Chuck flinched "- and that you abandoned the world and it's all fucked up now, but I'm sure there's a reason. I just know that you're Chuck, and you're clearly struggling with some stuff, so let us in so we can help."

Chuck grimaced. "I'm surprised you're giving this speech and not Sam."

"Well, when push comes to hug, I'm more of a girl than he is."

"Witty," Chuck said dryly.

There was a moment of silence.

"When did you figure it out?" Dean asked.

Chuck sighed, anger draining out of him a little. "When you guys got home this last time. I heard Bobby and Sam talking, and thought it was _completely fucking ridiculous_ , except that I had this feeling it just wasn't."

Dean nodded. "The nightmares, yeah. So…" he trailed off. "Do you remember?"

Chuck frowned, and shook his head. "Just enough to know I don't want to know."

"But how can you not want to know?" Dean pressed. "It's ultimate power! Who wouldn't want that?"

Chuck put his hands in his pockets. "You think hunting is a shit job, try being god," he said.

"What? Come on," Dean said incredulously. "It's god. How bad can it be?"

"I don't want to talk about it," Chuck said roughly. "I forgot for a reason."

They stood there in silence for another moment.

"If you don't come back, Raphael is going to kill us all," Dean said quietly.

Chuck said nothing. Chuck felt the memories stirring at the edge of his awareness; that this was all his fault in the end. That it was all pointless. He had failed.

He remembered people falling into cages, into pits, into endless cells he fashioned for them. He remembered preaching, and punishing, and doing all he could, and he remembered that it never mattered anyway.

"There's nothing I can do," Chuck finally said.

Dean and Castiel's eyes both widened. "What?" Dean almost yelled. "What do you mean, _there's nothing you can do?_ "

"It doesn't matter," Chuck said, pushing past them. "Maybe this apocalypse is stopped, but there will be another one. Billions of souls burn in hell as we speak. It. Doesn't. Matter."

"Can't you do something about any of that?" Dean pressed, following him, with Castiel behind him.

"Don't you think if there were something I could do, I would have done it?!" Chuck spat, turning to face Dean on the stoop.

Dean's face hardened. "All right, cut the crap. You're god. You can do the right thing, and you just haven't."

Sam and Bobby arrived back on scene just in time for the finale.

"How dare you," Chuck said, and his voice was like thunder "Castigate _me_ about doing the right thing. You know nothing of my existence. I am _being_ itself, I _am_ the right thing."

Dean was lifted on his feet and thrown into the house, and this time his landing was not gentle as he was slammed onto the hardwood floor next to Sam and Bobby.

Dean looked into his angry eyes, and beneath the righteous fury of God, he could see Chuck Shurley, struggling to do the right thing even though it felt like there was nothing to be done.

"Maybe we got off on the wrong foot," Dean said, "But from what I can tell, all you've done for the last three thousand years is hide."

"And what about the three _billion_ before?"

Dean found he didn't have an answer for that.

"Did it occur to you that maybe harassing God is the wrong thing to do?" Bobby huffed.

Chuck's eyes snapped to Bobby. "Don't call me that."

Castiel's face was drawn. "I tried to tell him that."

"If we don't know what's going on, then tell us!" Dean said, climbing to his feet again.

Chuck scoffed. "You don't want to know. Hell, _I_ don't want to know."

"What do you remember?" Sam pressed.

"I am not required to _explain myself_ ," Chuck said darkly, "Especially not to a bunch of mortals."

Bobby narrowed his eyes. "Now you listen here, boy."

When Bobby said _boy_ , the air in the room froze.

"We are your family, do you hear? Or have you conveniently forgotten that, along with everything else? This is what family is for; to drag the truth out of you and slap some sense into you when you need it."

There was a moment of silence.

"I am not a _boy_ ," Chuck rumbled.

Bobby swallowed, then said "Well you're acting like it."

For one long moment, Bobby Singer and God had a staring competition.

And Bobby Singer won.

"What is it that you want?" Chuck said.

"For you to tell us what in the hell is going on!" Bobby said. "Where have you been, what are you doing, why did you fall, when did you fall, what do you plan to do about apocalypse round 1, all of it. We can't make it right unless we know what the hell is going on."

Chuck lowered his eyes, looking at his shoes. "I've never been made to feel ashamed by a man before."

"There's a first time for everything," Bobby said.

"If there's anyone who can make even god feel ashamed, it's Bobby Singer," Dean said sagely.

Chuck swallowed. "Essentially, I fell because if I committed suicide, the universe would have sank into impenetrable darkness."

Everyone's eyebrows climbed on their face.

"What?" Castiel whispered.

Dean nodded incredulously. "God is suicidal. What a thrilling turn of events. Tell us, God, _why_ are you suicidal?"

"I'm sorry my emotional state is inconvenient for you," he almost spat.

Sam turned to Dean. "Dean, don't be a dick."

Dean sighed. "It's just… finding God was supposed to be good. We find god, wham-bam, Raphael is called off and everything goes back to being okay. But we never, ever get a good break."

"Why do you feel like this, Chuck," Sam asked more gently.

Chuck shrugged. "I am not really sure. My memories come and go. Nothing's really clear, except, you know, the sea of impenetrable darkness and misery."

Chuck was sitting on the couch, not paying any mind to the things going on around him. He was beneath his laptop, Dean was sitting around on the couch.

The pain in his head was growing, and it wasn't a headache pain so much as it was this great darkness on the edge of his vision, distracting him. It was dark, angry, and the longer Chuck sat there unmoving the more he felt it coil in his stomach.

He closed his eyes, and took a deep breath.

There was no use fighting it now.

There was no use fighting at all.

What did it matter?

Anger seeped into his bones. Chuck was never one for anger, but the feeling was big and foreign and felt much too large for his small body.

He'd given himself up for them, done everything for them, and they killed him for it.

How dare they?

With the thought came a rage that filled his limbs, made him want to reach out. Not to hit something, or throw something, but to reach out into the world around him and tear apart every atom.

He didn't notice the air crack with energy.

"Chuck?" Dean's voice, next to him, worried.

He didn't open his eyes, didn't move as the feelings settled into his bones.

"What's wrong?"

His eyes flew open and he jumped to his feet.

He could see Dean for what he really was, could see his soul inside his body, and for once the pure blue light didn't faze him. How _dare_ he ask what was wrong, as if he didn't know what was wrong, as if it weren't his and every human's choices which created suffering.

He swept his arm, and Dean was thrown across the room into a bookshelf.

He narrowed his eyes in satisfaction.

"Bobby!" Dean yelled, and coughed up blood. "Cas!"

Castiel was there in an instant, a finger already on it's way to Dean's forehead as his arm reached out and grabbed Castiel from across the room. He held his fist up, and Castiel was unable to reach his charge.

"Father?" Castiel's worried voice rung across the room.

Bobby and Sam were quick to run, and he felt satisfied at the look of panic on their faces.

"Chuck, what are you doing?" Bobby carefully asked.

He raised his arm, and Dean was dragged up the bookshelf into a standing position. _He_ was reminding them who _He_ was, someone to be feared and someone to be respected, their _Creator_. Who were _they_ to banish him, who were _they_ to hurt him?

 _How dare they?_

But as he opened his mouth to let loose the fury, it died. He couldn't say the words, because it wasn't true. He would let them hurt him a thousand times, let them kill him a thousand times more if it meant that one day they would see why he created them and why he loved them.

His arm dropped and so did Dean, and Castiel healed him in an instant.

Suddenly, Chuck came to, saw the men standing around in the room. "I… I didn't…"

"Chuck?" Sam asked, hopeful, uncertain.

He looked down at Sam, looked up at Sam, he didn't know, and Sam's eyes were on him, shining and eager, afraid and hopeful at the same time.

For a split second, he remembered.

He created humanity, he never wanted them to be afraid of him.

When he first brought his hand down in punishment, at the beginning, he hated it but didn't regret a damn thing because this is what it took.

Somewhere along the line, he stopped hating it. He was angry with them because they clamored for a god who would treat them like ants, and he hated himself because all those years ago, that's what he became.

The memories started coming one after another, of a great flood that killed everyone but Noah because when he looked into Noah's good eyes, something in his hard heart melted and he couldn't bear to drown him too. He remembered fires, and the burning earth, and arbitrary rules designed to keep his people in line, arbitrary rules they _wanted_. He remembered throwing them bodily into hell when they disobeyed, and with each person that went a part of him died too, because they could have had heaven if they'd just _wanted_ it.

"Father, say something." Castiel's voice was broken.

The cry was so full of hope, so yearning. It was everything good about humanity. Everything he wasn't anymore.

"Don't call me that," Chuck said, backing up. "I lost the right."

"Why do you say that?" Came the brave voice of Sam Winchester. He admired the antichrist's tenacity, his determination. He had the passing thought that even the antichrist was a better man than he was.

Chuck looked down at his hands, remembered standing on a cliff and waving as the water descended from the sky. "I killed everyone once. Brought water down from the sky, swept everyone away."

Sam gestured, tilted his head in hope, and said "But you didn't kill Noah."

He laughed a dry, humorless laugh. The smile faded. "I couldn't do it to him." He turned to Sam. "His eyes were so bright, you know? Such hope for the world. So, I decided that if I couldn't have hope for humanity, his would have to do."

"I made The Law just so that humans would have to obey something. They were good laws, sure, you _shouldn't_ eat pigs in unsanitary conditions because they tend to have tapeworms, but…" he rubbed his hands on his jeans. "I made The Law to force people to choose. Light or dark."

Sam sat down on the couch next to Chuck.

"But they chose darkness," Castiel's grave voice supplied.

Chuck looked up at them. "I don't remember much, but I remember the flood. Throwing people into hell when they disobeyed the law. You know I burnt people alive?"

Dean snorted, still wary where he was standing. "We've read the Bible."

Chuck made a noise. "I'm not sure the Bible's got everything right, but it got that right."

"So… do we need to be afraid you're going to smite us?" Too much humor in Dean's tone.

"I…" Chuck stood, looking at his now slightly shaking hands. "I need to go on a walk."

Chuck quickly crossed the space to the front door, slamming it shut behind him.

Dean bent over, putting his hands on his knees. "Lets not do that again," he wheezed.

"What did you do?" Sam exclaimed.

He must have been too emphatic, because immediately Dean rounded on Sam.

"Nothing! He was sitting there and then suddenly the air…" Dean waved around "Shimmered and made this loud cracking sound, so I figured it was him and asked what was wrong. I guess he was in a bad mood because the second I asked he threw me," gesturing to the bookshelf.

"Yeah, I was hoping this wouldn't happen," Bobby shook his head. "He _is_ described as the _jealous_ God, the _wrathful_ God… I was just hoping a few thousand years had changed his perspective, since Chuck doesn't exactly seem wrathful."

Castiel tilted his head. "If he has to come into himself progressively, it could just be that this is a phase of his recovery."

"It's not a phase I like," Dean grunted.

"I am sure that if he accidentally kills you in a fit, he will bring you back."

"I don't want to have to be brought back!" Dean exclaimed. "I've been brought back one too many times."

Dean looked at Sam, and Sam just shrugged unhelpfully. "I like being brought back," Sam offered. "Heaven sucks and hell sucks worse."

"Here sucks," Dean grumbled. "That's the whole problem."

Bobby grumbled, "Good to know my house is that bad."

Dean opened his mouth to correct himself, but then Bobby smiled.

"Cranky old man," he said instead.


	8. Chapter 8

"Okay Chuck," Bobby hummed. "You've had a few days to toy around. Think you can do something useful?"

Chuck laughed. "No."

"Come again?"

Next he scoffed. "Sure, I can like, make a giant hill or produce a rose out of thin air. But my actual memories about being God are limited to pretty much anything shoved right under my nose, or…" or my horrifying flashback about condemning my firstborn son to hell.

"Well, that might be enough,' Bobby drawled. "We could lure Raphael out to you, and you could deal with him."

"Deal with him?" Chuck exclaimed defensively. "What the hell does that mean?"

Bobby shrugged. "You're God! You probably have a lot of feelings about him. And like you said, shoved under your nose in a high pressure situation, it'll come to you.

Chuck leaned back into the couch, crossing his arms. "This is crap."

Castiel appeared before them.

"Great timing," Bobby said. "The boys are out fucking around or something, but I was just talking Raphael with Chuck."

"What do you want to do, Father?" Castiel asked, straight backed. "This might be the thing you need to recover what you've lost."

Chuck made an unidentifiable noise in his throat. "I don't think I was supposed to remember, not in this lifetime. I think this lifetime was supposed to be some sort of horrible penance that I was going to forget, so I could go back to being a just and righteous God or whatever."

"Okay?" Bobby asked.

Chuck shook his head. "I don't know. Don't you think it should be… clicking?"

"Yeah, I do. But it isn't, and there's not exactly a handbook for these things."

"It's because some part of me still doesn't want this, and that doesn't take a genius," he replied, sarcastic. "I know most people would rush to discover what their magic god powers could do, but I just… get nauseous."

Bobby contemplated him. "I don't know, I've noticed a change. You use bigger and more formal words these days, for one."

His tone was mockery. "Wow, yeah, I use big words, very lordly."

"So accept yourself, then!" Bobby exclaimed. "What do you want me to tell you?"

Chuck stood, roughly, sweeping everything off the desk where he was researching. "Want to talk acceptance? I'm angry, Bobby! So angry. Livid, constantly. When I'm nowhere to be found, it's because I feel like I'm this far away from smiting you," he bit, holding his forefinger and thumb barely apart.

The air itself was humming, cracking. Castiel was the first to notice, eyes going wide. Bobby was the second.

Chuck's voice was no louder, yet it echoed with what seemed like thunder. "What would you have me do, Singer? Accept my role as the righteous lord? Because the _righteous Lord_ thinks most of the time these days that destroying _everything_ and handing over the reins to the Darkness is the right thing to do."

"It is as I told you when we discovered the truth," Castiel stood firm, voice sure. "You are my Father. If you think ending it all is what is best for everyone, I will stand behind you."

He tilted his head, and considered his son. "You know, when I talk smiting, most people feel a sense of self preservation," he led, tone dark. He could remember standing before people, the air cracking much louder, those before him cowering in fear.

Castiel's whole demeanor softened. "There is no purpose to life if the one who gives you purpose has taken it away."

His anger didn't drain. The air still cracked with power, static electricity.

But suddenly, Chuck saw Castiel as separate from his fury, standing in the middle. Castiel had fallen so far, but Castiel redeemed himself and always sought to love humanity. He was the only angel who followed his last command.

"I'm furious with humanity," he hissed, teeth bared. But the air didn't crack, there was no threat here this time. "But…" he turned to Castiel.

Would Castiel have fallen and been redeemed without him? If God stuck around, Castiel would never have fallen. But he would have never learned from humanity (from Dean Winchester), and he would have never been as much as he was now.

That was his original plan all along, after they fell. Brokenness, redemption, family. Love.

"But the despair broke me," Chuck whispered. The memories washed over him.

He stood behind the desk, hand on the chair. His entire stance was shaky, the air no longer cracking with power. He was tired, and depressed, his back bent as if the weight of the world were on his shoulders.

Bobby barely breathed, deathly still.

God was absent on the pages of history from the time of Noah until now, and never in that time had he expressed anything other than absolute authority. This was a pivotal moment; not just in human history, but in the history of all creation.

And it was happening in his shitty living room, observed only by a fallen angel and an old drunk.

"It was so long," Chuck's voice broke, was stretched, as if he was holding back tears. "After I left heaven, I went to earth. I revealed myself to people across the world, the first Buddha, Ishmael, I told the pagan spirits I created of the plan and sent them to do their work, and when all that didn't work…"

A tear slid down his face.

"I became human. I let you beat me, and jeer at me, and displayed only my love in return. I let you kill me, nail me to a cross. I let you put nails through my hands and feet. I can still feel myself suffocating on my own blood."

His breath was beginning to catch, the tears coming one after another.

"Surely, if humanity saw that I would let you _murder_ me, you would realize I loved you!"

Tears were running down his eyes, and he wasn't bothering to hide them.

He had never been a pious man, never really thought he owed a creator anything. Still didn't. But this creator didn't create him and then expect obedience based just on that fact; this creator wanted a family. And then the family he breathed life into literally nailed him to a cross and bled him dry. And he stood here, before his murderers, and cried, and asked why _they_ didn't love _him_.

"My desperation turned to anger," he continued his story. "I'd done everything for you, and I was your creator. And you never returned my love." He turned away, eyes dark. "So, I left."

He heaved a rattled sigh. "I didn't destroy everything, because I've invested far too much in it to give up now. But I stopped investing any more. I thought if you were gonna come around, well, you will or you won't."

"I've been Chuck since then," he shrugged. "Well, I've lived a lot of lifetimes. But I was basically Chuck in all of them. An alcoholic, self-hating writer of some kind."

Castiel's shaky whisper entered the conversation. "Is that how you see yourself, Father? As a," Castiel looked like he would choke on the words. "…miserable failure?"

Chuck gave a wan smile, and said nothing in reply.

"I was really ready to tear you a new one," Bobby quietly shared. "When you got all your memories back, I was really gonna rip you a new one. But now I find that I can't."

Chuck shrugged. "Usually when I remember this much I go talk to Joshua. And we talk, and I go home and get high or drunk, and then wake up the next morning and don't remember."

But he sighed, and straightened his shoulders. "Not anymore. Because the Winchesters decided that Chuck was family. Not God, not Jesus theMessiah. Just… a random human. Hell, I'm not even much of a human. But I found a home with you, and you welcomed me in, just like -" He snapped his fingers "- that."

Chuck gave a watery smile. "Just like that, you forgave me of everything I'd done, without knowing what it was."

"I wasn't so quick to forgive you once we found out who you were," Bobby said reproachfully, but Chuck cut him off.

"Yeah, you were, Singer," he mocked him. "If you didn't forgive me, you wouldn't have let me go when you hypnotized me. You would have made me remember for ten or twenty seconds, long enough to get your pound of flesh."

"Then you would have disintegrated him," Castiel added unpleasantly.

"Revenge doesn't care about that," Chuck said, waving his hand.

Bobby stood there, without even his hatred of God to hold on to anymore. "No, Cas, he's right, the idjit," he huffed. "We all knew Chuck, and if Chuck was God and he wasn't lying to us, I knew there was an explanation. Chuck Shurley _is_ a coward sometimes," he gave Chuck the eye, "but he's a good guy."

Bobby cleared his throat. "So that's it then, huh?" he asked. "God's back in the game?"

"Don't call me that, _still_ ," Chuck insisted, pulling at his hair. "God isn't the one the Winchesters welcomed into their family; Chuck is. I'm a lot more proud to be him than I am to be 'God.' God is just the guy who was here first."

Bobby couldn't help it, the warm tendril that reached into his heart. He put on being gruff and he was pissed off most of the time about aching bones, or shitty weather, but these damn Winchesters just did that to him.

Just then, Sam and Dean Winchester pounded into the house.

"You boys are usually right at ground zero, but this time I got all the glory," Bobby jeered.

"What the hell?" Dean asked incredulously as Bobby took the beer case he was holding.

Castiel turned to face the brothers. "Chuck has remembered."

"Remembered?" Sam asked. "Like, for real permanently remembered?"

"Yeah, and since when are you back to calling him Chuck?" Dean demanded of Cas.

They looked up to see Chuck still standing behind the desk, eyes clearly still red from crying. When they met his eyes, he looked down at his shoes. "Hey boys," he supplied mildly.

"He remembers everything?" Dean pointed at Chuck, just to make sure, eyes narrowing at the man.

Castiel foolishly answered. "Yes -"

"All right then," Dean dropped the grocery bags instantly.

Bobby put an arm out on his chest to stop him. "Dean, stop," he insisted. "It's Chuck, it's really Chuck."

"What are you saying, Bobby?" Dean ground out, still looking at Chuck.

Chuck was returning the gaze somewhat shamefully, which didn't make it any better.

Castiel now stepped in front of Chuck. "You know I fell from heaven for you, Dean Winchester, so listen when I tell you you should not be angry at Chuck. We all misunderstood his intentions -"

"I don't give a damn what his intentions were!" Dean all but shouted. "Intentions never got anyone anywhere!"

"This is the price of free will!" Castiel roared back, shaking the household. "Do you remember what I told you?" his eyes flared. "After Sam fell. You didn't want heaven, or hell, you wanted free will. This was the price."

He held his arm back, gesturing to Chuck. "Chuck has given everything he has, which is a _considerable amount,_ to ensure the integrity of our free will."

"Besides all of that," Bobby said. "It's Chuck, remember? Chuck who stood up to Lillith when he was nothing more than a 'penthouse forum writer,' Chuck who pulled Castiel's teeth out of his hair and kept fighting the angels anyways, despite how shell-shocked and scared he was? Chuck, who, when it was go time, dropped everything and went. That's what I mean when I say it's still Chuck. It's still the same guy."

"What did he say to convince you two?" Sam wondered aloud, stepping in. "I mean, Bobby hates God like every hunter hates God, and Castiel, he actually abandoned you."

Castiel sighed. "I find it difficult to hold that against him given all we've done in return."

Sam pushed past Castiel, to Chuck.

He was still standing there, looking down at his shoes, ashamed.

"Still a self-loathing wreck?" Sam asked Chuck plainly.

"Yep," Chuck admitted with a grimace.

Sam considered him, and took a seat opposite him. "Why did you leave?"

"I just finished up explaining this to Bobby," he said rather tiredly, walking around to sit down on the couch where no table was between them. "I saw that nothing I did was working."

"Working to what?" Dean asked, eyes narrow.

"To show you that I love you!" Chuck exclaimed. "Love you enough to respect your choices. Dean, I let you go to hell when you traded yourself for Sam because I love you enough to respect your decision that his life was worth your soul. I thought it was a stupid as shit decision, but I let it happen."

"But you could have just saved me!" Dean yelled. "And you said it yourself, you let it happen!"

"Dean, give him a chance!" Bobby shouted into the fight.

"What did you do, Chuck, mind control him?" Dean rounded on Bobby. "Because the Bobby I know would be in this with me!"

"The whole point of creation was about giving you choices!" Chuck roared. The foundation beneath him quaked. "About the choice to love! What does love matter, if it comes with no risk of heartbreak? What does any choice matter without consequences?"

"You know, that all sounds nice," Dean sneered, "But what the fuck does that even mean?"

The earth felt heavy beneath their feet. "I'll put it in terms you understand, Dean," he all but spat. "I wanted what anyone wants. I wanted someone to love me, I wanted someone _to_ love. I wanted a _family_. But it's not really a family if they're literally slaves to my will, is it?"

Chuck stood up to meet Dean, squaring. His voice came out like thunder. "Don't you think if I had another way, I would have taken it? I watched you literally climb over yourselves for _millennia_ to get away from me! You threw yourselves to sin, evil, torture and death to _escape_ me. I tried every different way I could think of; being an authoritative father, being a loving father, being a helicopter father, being a father who let his kids make their own choices -"

Chuck's voice turned broken and desperate "- And no matter what I did, you still all just wanted to get away. Everything I'd ever made was trying to get away from me. I created sixty billion people and not a single solitary _one_ of them would love me, no matter how much I loved them."

He collapsed in the chair, rubbing his face.

"Sometimes I consider wiping the slate clean, but only because it's what everyone says they want. You…" tears were leaking from his eyes. "You'd all rather die than love me."

Dean found he couldn't yell at someone who was this pathetic, even if he was God. "What about suffering then, huh?"

"Did you not just hear me? It's not love if it's slavery. And it's not free will if there's not a choice. It's not my fault you guys choose the worse choice, every time," he said. "Or maybe it is. Maybe I'm not a good enough father."

Castiel took a step closer. "You must know that's not the case."

"What other explanation is there, Castiel?" He said. "I created… everything."

Dean looked at Chuck, and he didn't see an all powerful God. He saw Chuck Shurley, the guy who threw himself to Lillith to save his blood sucking brother, who even the angels called an abomination.

"But there's always another way," Dean said, sinking onto the couch beside him. "There always is."

"I know," Chuck replied. "It was that you were all going to make your own choices anyways. Atheists often respond with the accusation that I could have made them into the sort of person who would choose differently, but I didn't make anyone pre-set to choose anything. Wouldn't really be free will if people were made the sort of people who would always choose something."

"Everyone makes their own choices, in the end, and nobody is gonna tell them any differently." He heaved a sigh, and turned to Sam. "I left because there was nothing I could do."

Sam asked quietly, "And you hate yourself, because they wouldn't love you?"

Chuck pinched the bridge of his nose. "Even the things I _created_ won't love me. What's that say about me?"

"He died, you know," Bobby said bluntly. "Let us nail him to a cross, hoping that humanity would see that if he literally let us murder him, and still love us, that he was worth it."

Chuck turned his head away, looked down somewhere in the corner. "I'm not concerned about that so much," he mumbled. "I have nightmares about it, but what's a nightmare?"

He turned to face the Winchesters. "This, I never anticipated. My life as Chuck, it's everything I see myself as." He grimaced as he spoke. "It's one thing for a family to show you hospitality when you're the promised Messiah. It's another when you're a drunk writer, and a coward."

"You aren't a coward," Dean waved his hand, despite himself. "You had a lot going on we didn't know about at the time. We didn't know you had weird nightmares, or were serially beat in your childhood, or whatever. We thought you were just a perv in a bathrobe."

Chuck raised his eyebrows, laughing as he stood. "Oh, I am definitely a perv in a bathrobe."

"Am?" Sam gave a crooked smile, standing too.

He sighed. "I'm Chuck, aren't I?"

Dean cursed his life, that he was forgiving God. But it wasn't God standing in front of him, it was Chuck Shurley, a born tortured writer who's shit childhood and meaningless adulthood didn't help the situation much. He had a wealth of strength and goodness inside of him, and this cruel world had left it to rot.

He'd hugged Cas, Bobby, and Sam, so he went in for the acceptance hug here.

What he didn't expect was Sam piling on, then Bobby, and even weirdly enough, Cas, who was hugging the tightest of them all.

"This is the gayest thing I've ever done," huffed Dean from the middle of the pack.

"No it's not," mocked Sam. "You had a big cry right to my face after a nightmare a couple years ago. _That_ was the gayest thing you've ever done."

Just then, they all felt Chuck shaking from the middle of the pack. _Yes, he was definitely crying again_.

" _Now_ it's the gayest thing you've ever done."

"Enough," Dean snarked, pushing everyone free.

He grabbed Chuck's shoulder, and looked down at the man as he hurriedly wiped his face again. "Go clean yourself up, okay?" he said, squeezing the shoulder firmly.

Chuck gave a sort of wild nod as he fled the room.

Not ten seconds later, Sam was giving him the bitch face.

"You have got to me kidding me. I just forgave God, isn't that a big enough step for me?" Dean bitched, arms out.

"He's like, three billion years old, Dean, and this is the first time he's ever had a family. Don't judge him for crying."

"I'm not!" Dean's face was put on sincerity. "Promise! It's Chuck, right? Did I judge Chuck when he threw that big fit after digging up that grave?"

Sam gave Dean bitch face #34, withering condescension.

Dean walked into the living room to find Chuck, with a glass of whiskey and his laptop on his lap.

"Still working on that crap novel?" Dean joked, sitting down next to him and pouring his own glass.

Chuck's tone was humor and derision. "What else would I be doing?"

Dean shrugged. "Remember how all I did was yell at you to get off your ass and stop wallowing?" he laughed. "Well -"

"You were right, Dean," Chuck said, turning to the man at the other end of the couch. He turned back to his screen, and said no more.

"Could you say that again, for posterity?" Dean quipped. "Wait, I need to go grab Sam so he can hear."

"Chuck thinks I'm right!" Dean yelled at his brother.

"Fuck what Chuck thinks!" Sam shot right back. "This isn't Chuck's life!"

"Chuck is God, Sam, remember? The final arbiter of right and wrong?"

Chuck himself was just watching the altercation with Bobby, Chuck a little astonished and Bobby a lot annoyed.

"I thought you liked that God shit, Sam!"

Sam scoffed. "Yeah, but it's you whose been his biggest fan ever since he showed up."

"That's not true," Dean said aggressively. "Bobby has."

Bobby turned on his heel, muttering "Oh my God" as he left the room.

Chuck decided that was a good move, and followed him. But the brother's pointless yelling could still be heard from inside the house.

"This is unbearable," Chuck commented. "I would ask if they're always like this, but I've lived here long enough to know the answer to that."

"Two seconds is enough to know the answer to that," Bobby muttered. "And you know what? In a month they'll have forgotten whatever the hell it is they're arguing about. Idjits."

Bobby walked in the room to find Chuck bent over his dusty old books

"What are you doing?" he asked, a little startled.

Chuck looked up at him through his glasses. "What's it look like? Researching!"

"Researching what?" he gestured. "Don't you, like, know all?"

Chuck looked down at the book, finishing the sentence he was reading. "I mean, sort of. I made everything, I know how it all works. But man, it's crazy, the people that things have done with it," he laughed. "I didn't invent spells. Sometimes when I read spells, I'm blown away. Like, I'd never thought of doing that before!" he laughed. "I didn't think of Nachos, either, and I _love_ nachos."

He looked up at Bobby again, who was still looking at him. "Take the basic key of solomon," he explained. "That's the Key of _Solomon_ , not the Key of God. I didn't have anything to do with that. So simple, yet such a practical application of basic Enochian symbols. Elegant in it's simplicity."

"Why are you impressed, though? You can do all that stuff," he replied, sitting across from him.

"Yeah, but I just… will it. It's crazy what people have come up with. It's only been ten thousand years and humanity has already conquered almost the entire natural world."

"I don't know about that," Bobby waffled. "There's still great swaths of the forest that are untouched, the poles -"

"- that technology exists, you just haven't used it that way," Chuck waved Bobby off, getting back to his book.

As it was, Chuck did not return for a long time. Long enough that they all found their way to the kitchen table, and began to drink themselves silly at it. Even Castiel had acquired rather a large amount of alcohol, and five bottles in was beginning to outrun his angelic metabolism.

"I have never heard of my Father being anything but righteous fury," Castiel slurred. "The stories Anael would tell, of The Lord who commanded all things to be. I idolized the Great Authority, the Final Good."

"Yeah, this isn't what any of us expected," Sam slurred back. "But at the same time it is, isn't it? Why shouldn't God feel this way?"

"Chuck," Dean slurred, drunkest of them all. At the time, standing up to God seemed like the only thing to do, but after the fact it seemed like the stupid thing to do.

"Why shouldn't Chuck feel this way?" Sam continued conversationally. "I mean, he gave us free will, look what we did with it."

"I'm not sure it excuses him," Bobby grumbled. "We all suffered."

"But you heard what he said to me," Sam leaned over the table. "It's the price of free will; and since even the worst suffering is temporary, it's kind of all worth it, right?"

"You don't even know what the reward is, boy, how can you say it's worth it?" Bobby leaned forward as well.

"An eternity of not-suffering?" Sam snorted. "Hell, it doesn't have to be peace and joy, just an eternity of not-this, spent in freedom, is worth it."

"I concur," Castiel hummed, emptying the tenth bottle of vodka. "Millions of years spent in obedience was not suffering, but it was not a life."

"Tell us about it," Dean prompted, hitting the table. "What's it like being millions of years old?"

"Might help us understand… Chuck," Sam mumbled, the words getting lost in his mouth.

"My time was not spent like Chuck's," Castiel protested. "His existence is decision, leading creation… mine was simple obedience."

"Tell us anyways," Bobby said. "Sue me, I'm curious."

Castiel sighed. "The humans, no matter what you tried, things tended to end the same. I have seen no victories as full of love and family as yours," Castiel said, nodding towards them, "But I have seen other small victories over the years. Mostly, humanity is marked by suffering, caused by weakness. Humans have always been trying to forsake their free will."

Castiel sighed, more deeply. "If he has been around since the dawn of time, I can certainly see why he would feel hopeless."

"I don't feel hopeless," Chuck murmured, appearing in the kitchen. Castiel had attuned them to people who could teleport, though, so they were less than startled by it.

"If I felt hopeless, none of this would exist anymore," that low quality returned to his voice, but it was sad. Everything fell silent, creation itself turning to listen.

"Do you know you do that?" Sam turned, swaying to look at Chuck. "With your voice?" he clarified, giving a crooked smile.

Chuck cleared his throat. "Sorry Sam, I just forget sometimes."

"How do you forget?" Dean spluttered. "Chuck, when we met you, you were scared of me."

Chuck put his hands up, mock surrender. "Confused, remember?" he quipped, pouring himself a glass. "Let me catch up."

"Can God even get drunk?" Sam wondered aloud.

"Chuck certainly can," Chuck said, downing a glass.

"Still have the tolerance of a baby," Bobby rumbled, laughing, when Chuck blinked hard.

"You don't need to stop, with the voice thing," Sam continued rambling, picking up the lost thought. "If you're God, be yourself, whatever, just remember that you do it." _It's really cool_ , he thought privately to himself. _Gives everything a sense of gravity._ "Makes me feel like I'm really getting to know you."

"You're really drunk, Sam, you said the last part out loud," Chuck laughed, throwing back another glass.

"Are you reading our minds?" Dean leaned back in his chair, indignant.

"Not really, but Sam was thinking loudly," Chuck defended himself. "Plus, Sam doesn't mind, he practically reads his own mind to me every night in prayer."

"You still pray?" Dean's voice was soft.

"Yep," he verified. "Well, I don't know if I'll keep doing it if God is sleeping the next bedroom over, but until yesterday I did."

"Do not stop," Chuck murmured, voice heavy again. "It brings me great comfort to know that you still believe in me." He was leaning over the table now, normal drunk Chuck, but his voice stilled everything around him as the earth itself turned to listen.

"You care that I believe in you?" Sam whispered.

Chuck smiled wanly. "I want the people I love to love me back. Isn't that what anyone wants?"

"Hear, hear," Dean reached out his glass, and they all clinked together.

"We gonna have more sappy ass conversations like this?" Bobby grunted. "Ever since Chuck moved in my house has turned to a soap opera."

"It's God, Bobby, -"

"Chuck," he interjected.

"Chuck, you're God, get over it," Dean grumbled. "It's God. I think if _God himself_ needs a chick flick moment,"

"Or a million," he interjected again.

Dean rolled his eyes. "Or a million, we can handle it. You're the one who told me Dad was cowardly because he'd rather discipline Sammy than reach out to him."

Bobby pursed his lips. "Yeah, but there's enough morose shit in our lives."

"This isn't like getting drunk and saying 'the darkness is within me,' or whatever," Dean replied easily. "This isn't an intervention to keep someone from recklessly hunting."

"This isn't a rerun," Sam summarized. "Chuck needs help, here we are."

"Help with what?" Chuck mumbled into the still night. "God isn't even meant to need help," he sneered.

The glass he was holding shattered in his hand, and whiskey got all over the floor. Castiel waved his hand, and the mess was cleaned up easily.

"The Creator isn't meant for anything," Castiel said. "It is the created beings which have purposes, but I was always taught that the uncreated Father was mere being."

"I think what he's saying is, are you really meant to be anything?" Bobby supplied, gesturing. "Like, who makes the decisions about what you're meant to be? You?"

Another glass with more whiskey was already in Chuck's hand, and he slammed it down on the table. "It's a little preposterous, don't you think? God needing the help of humanity?"

"It's a little preposterous that I need Samantha to drag chick flick moments out of me, but it's still true," Dean shrugged, drinking more.

"You've never admitted that out loud before, no matter how drunk," Sam whispered, touched.

"He has, when you're not around," Bobby chuckled. "Boy's a big sap."

"Of course, because little Sammy can't see," Sam jeered, a little hurt.

"We're giving _God_ therapy, I figured it was time to drop the pretenses," Dean mumbled, shrugging.

"All right, I take your point, Winchester," Chuck grumbled. He sighed. "I created humanity in my image, and then I expect them to somehow be different than me. I created humanity to need love, and connection, and then I expect myself to do without."

"But humanity was not meant to be my equal… or maybe they were," he complained. He put his head in his hands. "It's been so long."

"But what is the alternative?" Castiel supplied quietly. "Ending it all? Or ending yourself? If you are alive, you might as well try."

"I'm not alive," Chuck mumbled, being difficult. "I am."

"What do you even want, Chuck?" Dean pressed. Their volume had all dropped, Chuck's voice by far the most commanding in the room.

Chuck's eyes narrowed again, and he stood up roughly. "I don't know!" His voice thundered, quiet and loud at the same time.

"If that's not human then I don't know what the fuck is," Bobby pointed out, just leaning back in his chair.

His head turned on a swivel to Bobby. "I'm not meant to be human," His voice ground, seemingly shaking the foundation of the house. "I am as far above you as you are above an ant."

"And yet you admire the ants!" Sam exclaimed, a little louder, sitting up.

"Humanity could learn from the ants," He sneered.

"Then why could you not learn from humanity?" Sam pressed, perhaps a little foolishly.

"Because I created humanity! And the ants! Humanity did not create the ant -" His face changed, frustration, age. "Why am I bickering with the antichrist about ants? This is beneath me."

"If you think like that, Chuck, everything is beneath you," Dean pressed. "If you won't engage with what's beneath you, literally what else do you have?"

Dean saw the hurt on Sam's face out of the corner of his eye, and resolved to talk to him about it tomorrow. If he remembered. God, he hoped Sam didn't remember.

Chuck swallowed, and the anger drained from his face. It was replaced by a bone-crushing sorrow, and Dean felt his own heart reach out to it.

"I suppose this is a human crisis I'm having," he laughed uncertainly. "Humanity keeps choosing death over life, hate over love, and I keep wondering…" he dipped his head. "This is pathetic. I keep wondering 'why does everyone leave me?'"

"We're here," Dean defended. "Castiel fell to defend humanity. We fought the dick angels to stop the apocalypse."

"You think I'm a dick too," Chuck sniped at Dean. "And every one of you here has fallen. You threw yourself to the pit, Sam drank an innocent woman, Bobby has sins that don't need shared, and Castiel hates me more than any of you can comprehend."

Castiel shifted in his chair, looking guilty.

"You didn't choose to love the lord, you chose to love humanity," Chuck's voice quieted. "I was going to say they deserve it less than me, but I'm not so sure."

"There are people who love you, God," Sam offered. Chuck rolled his eyes, but decided to say nothing. "At churches the world over, there are millions of people who love you, and give everything to follow the example you set as Jesus."

He pursed his lips.

"I know you hear their prayers," Castiel murmured. "You know their hearts, you know they're sincere."

"Their opinions would change the second they met me," Chuck laughed, tremulously. "I'm a train wreck."

"Everyone's a train wreck, get over it," Bobby said, not unkindly.


End file.
